NuCamp’s passion is to build the exceptional! They manufacture some of the highest quality recreational vehicles available in North America. Their dedicated craftsmen are committed to building with integrity and embracing innovative design. Their superior construction techniques and strict quality control set them apart from other manufacturers. Every nuCamp product is meticulously created by hand in Sugarcreek, Ohio.
In an effort to further bring their “family” of customers together, nuCamp endeavored to create a mobile application to supplement their campers experiences during adventures. Top priority was given to the ideas of bringing support to their customers fingertips as well as enabling “nuCampers” to find each other while on their travels.
Additionally, nuCamp wanted to create the ability to plan their adventures in the application as well as capturing the moments that mattered in a journal to be reflected upon later or shared with family and friends.
Finally, it was of the utmost importance that our level of software craftsmanship matches the quality and craftsmanship that goes in to every nuCamp camper.
understand client needs
From the outset of the project, the augustwenty team began to integrate with nuCamp to better understand how they interact with their customers, give meaning to customer data they’ve collected, as well as what nuCamp viewed as a desirable outcome. To accomplish this, our team immediately established a cadence of communication and delivery to work towards our shared goals.
understand client technological capabilities
nuCamp is known as one of the premier manufacturers of campers, not software design and development. Although their staff was missing software engineers, their commitment to sound principles of quality, integrity, and excellence in EVERYTHING they build is present always. Throughout the project, an emphasis was placed on making sound technical choices that would enable nuCamp to grow their staff to meet the need of app support and development.
For a polished experience, we chose to build two native applications on Android and iOS, using Kotlin and Swift, respectively. For the back-end, we needed something we could get up and running quickly and would be simple to learn (for any future hires) as well as easy to maintain going forward. To achieve this we chose the Elixir language and Pheonix web framework.
As a side benefit, elixir is robust and scalable if their needs should grow or shift since it is built on the Erlang virtual machine (called BEAM) - a technology that was introduced in 1986 for the telecommmunication industry and has proven to be highly available and fault tolerant for web applications as well.
utilize customer feedback to drive product decisions
As always at augustwenty, we push for the shortest feedback loops. This typically surfaces as the question, “What does the conversation with your customers look like? How can we get direct and meaningful feedback quickly and act on it?”
nuCamp was open to our inquiries and before we knew it, we were attending their annual rally “uCamp” at their headquarters in Sugarcreek, OH. We prepared a functional prototype to tell the story of how we arrived at the app at that time and where we were going. The attending campers listened intently to our presentation and ask a plethora of insightful questions. The recommendations, questions, tips, and personal experiences shared during that first uCamp helped shape how we prioritized feature development, implemented testing strategies, and ultimately the end result of the application.
connecting campers
Leveraging this approach at a uCamp event yielded what is arguably the most impressive feature: CONNECT.
The CONNECT feature enabled campers to toggle sharing aspects of their profile information, communication preferences, and geographical location with other uCamp:TheApp users. This feature was one of the most requested features at both uCamp events we attended. The impact to the community from a wayfinding perspective is obvious, but a significant insight we uncovered was the communication aspect that frankly has the potential to extend this feature into forefront of how nuCamp reaches existing and potential customers.
innovative solution
The augustwenty team built and deployed four versions of the mobile application on both platforms: Android and iOS. The initial version of the app focused primarily on Support, Trip Planning, and Journaling.
The support area of the application is directly integrated with the customer support software service nuCamp uses on their website. It was important to couple tightly with services they were already familiar with so that support requests could be managed by current processes as well as allowing the knowledgebase to be maintained in one area.
The trip planner leverages the map to allow users to search for locations and add them to a trip within the app. Each location added to a trip has the local weather forecast as well as a notepad to capture any notes that are pertinent for your time adventuring there!
The journal features an integrated gallery where you can add photos to your personal journal entries as well as location, active RV, and planned trips that you were on when you captured the moment.
The CONNECT feature control toggles visibility of other nuCampers that are sharing their location via the uCamp:TheApp. Using the profile feature, each camper can fine tune the information that is visible to other campers. Additionally, each user can choose their communication methods (email or SMS) if any at all.
