Festive Fun
Christmas should be fun! It’s one of the only times in the year that business stops across the country. We Are Sweet has always relished that week or two of time off to reset and recharge. A change of scenery, a different routine and time with loved ones is good for the soul and ultimately good for business. We want our team and our clients to re-energise and come back in the new year refreshed.
That time off does come at a cost. Despite some companies winding down during December, We Are Sweet seems to ramp up in order to fit an entire month of work into the 3 weeks available. Added to the end of year rush is the extra Christmas themed marketing and gifting we do to say thanks to the people we work with.
Each year has seen a new theme and a little special something to bring joy to those around us. Last year we created some very specific on-brand ‘sweet’ sweets. These tasty treats were a hit with those that received them, but this year we wanted to do something that everyone could enjoy.
Christmas Concepts
We involve the full Sweet team whenever possible. After all, two heads are better than one and there’s true value in collaboration. This year's theme was no exception, so we arranged a snow-storming session for the team to drum up some inspiring ideas.
We loved the thought of making this year all about Digital Transformation. It’s a fitting concept for 2020 which has seen Digital Transformation happening at an accelerated pace. Our resident UI & UX expert Martina devised a concept where Santa was a client who wants to take advantage of Digital Transformation and use technology to revolutionise his operations!
The interactive crowning glory of this idea was an app that digitises the infamous “naughty or nice” list. Given the varied skill set in the team, this is something we could design and build relatively quickly that would also form the basis of the Christmas artwork and supporting social media content. So we got to work.
Decorated Digital Design
To create a case study for the app, the process followed all the typical motions of a real project. We conducted a Discovery Session, which is where all our projects start out. After collecting Santa’s requirements, we quickly moved into wireframing. With the clock already ticking on December, we wanted to keep it simple, easy to use, but above all else - fun.
We wireframed screens for how the interactive app would work based on a simple name search that would do some random calculations to reveal whether the user had indeed been naughty or nice. Users that were deemed nice would see a celebratory animation while naughty users would be given a cheeky reason as to what they had done wrong this year.
Once the layouts had been created to demonstrate the user journey, we put together high-fidelity designs to demonstrate how the app would look and feel. We decided that since the newly branded Santapp was for Mr. Claus himself and not for us, we should give it a lick of red and green rather than the pink We Are Sweet is known for.
Tinsel Covered Technology
Santapp was built using the Vue.js framework. This approach to browser-based app creation saves us huge amounts of time on the heavy lifting so we can focus on what the app actually does and how it interacts with the user. Much like Santa, our clients also benefit from our usage of frameworks like Vue.js to reduce the time and cost, allowing the team to focus on crafting the best user experience.
A key consideration was making the codebase as simple as possible. We wanted to provide a solution that required no back-end, making it more lightweight and reactive on mobile devices. We also needed to comply with data protection regulations, so made the decision early on that we wouldn’t be storing any names in our database, just the industry-standard Google Analytics so we could report usage of the app back to Santa.
The web application went through our usual deployment pipeline, ultimately being hosted in an S3 bucket with Cloudfront providing world-class CDN performance. Santa’s audience is worldwide, so a CDN ensures that visitors all around the world experience great performance and fast loading times.
Elf-level Quality Assurance
Santapp has been subjected to the same scrutiny as any We Are Sweet project, including our rigorous testing procedure. The app is fully responsive and designed to work just as well at desktop sizes as it does on mobile devices.
Even though we turned this one round in record time, the app still includes all the interaction and visual cues users have come to expect from quality systems. Santapp has lots of visual elements including animated text, dynamic backgrounds, interactive graphics and, of course, the pretend “calculation” with no less than a candy cane loading bar. The celebration animation for “nice” users provides a small dopamine hit - a small but important part of the user experience in any web application.
Our approach to any new platform is to get the core functionality polished then get it out there for actual use and real-world testing. Santapp is an MVP (minimum viable product) to meet Santa’s initial brief. It could do so much more in the future. Who knows, maybe next year you could have your own version of Santapp in your own branding with your own content-managed reasons for naughty or nice results? Or maybe we could even put together an API integration with a fulfilment platform to send a fun gift to those that entered their details?
Seasonal Socials
We prototyped a separate dashboard to provide Santa with an overview of the entire naughty list. This design captures the concept of the app and was used to create artwork for Christmas cards that we send out to clients. The cards include a QR code that allows you to quickly visit the Santapp and try out your own name or go back and try the names of your friends.
Effective storytelling is a powerful marketing tool, so we turned the whole campaign into a week’s worth of social media content. We created 5 social posts that describe the entire project from conception to delivery as though Santa were a real client. Through analytics and tracking, we will be able to see how many people have actively taken part with santapp and determine whether they arrived via a QR code from the printed cards or through a link from our social content.
Try it out for YoursELF!
If this article is the first you’ve heard of Santapp and you’re this far down the page already then we may have ruined a little of the Santapp Christmas magic for you. There’s not much left to say other than what are you waiting for? Go and try it out, try your friend's names out and share it with them!
Most importantly, stay safe and have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.