Building a product we co-own

Almost everything nVisionIT builds belongs to someone else. A client describes an outcome, we design and deliver the system, and they own it. That is our business and it will remain our business.

UMOYA Zone is the exception. It is a personal development and performance app built as a joint venture with its founders, who spent years developing a coaching method for helping people set goals and stay with the habits that support them. We brought the engineering, and we share in what the product becomes.

What each side brought

The founders had a method and years of running it with people directly. What they did not have was a way to put it in someone's pocket and keep it working on two mobile platforms. We could build and run the software, and we were never going to invent a coaching method.

Co-ownership puts both sides behind the same result. When the founders ask for a feature we are not quoting for it. We decide together whether it earns its place in the product, and some requests stop there.

The decision that shaped everything

The first real product decision was about data. People use the app to record how they see themselves, including on bad weeks. We decided early that those entries would stay on the user's phone and never reach our servers. It closed off some features that depend on collecting everyone's data centrally, and it made the product one that people can be honest in. A later piece describes what that meant for the engineering.

Work that never ends

A client project ends in acceptance and handover. A product does not end. Every new release of iOS and Android needs testing against it, the app stores ask their own questions, and somebody has to decide what the next version is for.

In client work that continuing effort usually sits in someone else's budget. Here it sits in ours, and it has changed how we advise clients at design time. When a client asks for a second platform, an extra dependency or a feature few people will use, we now price in the years of maintenance it brings along with the build.

The first minute

People use enterprise software because their job requires it, and they put up with a clumsy screen. People open a wellbeing app on their own time, and if the first minute is confusing many never come back. That has pushed the product towards a short start, a single clear first action, and features that stay only if they are used.

UMOYA Zone is aimed at individuals, and at organisations that want to offer their people a structured programme: companies, sports academies, schools and health settings. What it does is described on the UMOYA Zone page.