In this group project, you will work together to conceptualize a mobile application for a specific real-world use case. The purpose of the project is to give you all a simulated experience of what working in a real early-stage software development team is actually like.

At the end of the project you’ll have created a set of team deliverables that you can use as part of your portfolios, as well as having the experience and confidence of knowing that you (and a group of peers) can work together to deliver real tangible products! Let’s get started by first understanding the fictional company that we’ll be delivering our MVP solution for.

About BattArray BattArray is an EV (electronic vehicle) battery management service provider who aims to bring the technology to tier 2 and tier 3 cities in India where there is a lack of current EV infrastructure. Some of the major concerns that consumers have while purchasing an electric vehicle is battery charging time, range and charging infrastructure. Currently this limits the use of an EV mostly to larger more well-connected cities.

BattArray has concluded that they can address the battery availability problem by partnering with mom-and-pop stores. Their approach is to install micro-battery exchange units that allow users to quickly pick up a fully charged battery and replace it with the discharged one in their vehicle. Long-term this strategy aligns well with plans announced by major EV companies about creating a universal battery tech that can be used by multi brand EVs. By partnering with existing small family-owned non-chain stores throughout India, the idea is that EV battery supply will be easily spread via existing infrastructure.

How BattArray Helps Vinay an 18-year-old college student who has recently purchased his first EV and is excited to explore travelling on a two-wheeler, but he is concerned about the EVs practicality for long distance travel. He lives in a tier 1 city but has relatives in tier 2 and 3 cities who he visits frequently and wishes range anxiety does not stop him from travelling wherever he wants to.

BattArray is partnered with the brand that Vinay purchased his EV from, and their service allows him to travel as he wishes to without having range anxiety. Vinay travels to his relative’s residence every weekend and the distance is about 150km to-and-fro but his EVs range capacity is only 100km and there are no charging stations in the route he travels in.

Fortunately for him, Vinay has the BattArray mobile application through which he can plan his travel and identify partnered stores who have charged batteries to be picked up when he reaches. The application lets the user know the number of partners currently operating in the area, the number of batteries they are hosting, the charge percentage of the batteries, the price for the exchange of the batteries and gives users the ability to pre-book a battery swap.

For vendors partnered with BattArray, the application shows the number of batteries they have available to host, the health and charge of the batteries, the cost to charge the batteries and the proposed selling price based on the charge percentage.

A well-informed Vinay sets off on his 150km journey and at about 90km he reaches a partnered store to exchange the battery in his EV for a fully charged one. The battery is exchanged for a service charge of 100rs, and the discharged battery is put back on the charge station for the next potential rider.

Group Assignment As application developers we’re asking you as a group to propose a product vision for the BattArray MVP mobile application. You’ll need to think about the user journey and the in-app user experience and make decisions as a group on overall direction.

We are not expecting you to build a final production-ready mobile app. A functional prototype for an Android application using React Native is a good way to demo your conclusions as a team. You can explore other frameworks like Kotlin and Flutter (or any other which fits the requirement) but keep in mind not to spend too much time deciding on technology stack. The goal of this group project is to see how well you are able to discuss and pull together a unified product vision. You will not have access to any demo or internal data and are free to take inspiration from other applications or products.

To help you break this down into milestones as a group, you will need to:

Research, discuss and then create your initial wireframes based on the project brief. Create an MVP Android application using React Native that puts your theory into practice. Create a group presentation that explains your proposed approach, making sure to include a live demonstration of the MVP mobile app. You will present your findings and MVP mobile application via a group presentation on the last day of the project. You will have 20-30 minutes of presentation time in total. You should allow for presentation time for each team member. Your presentation should not extend beyond 30 minutes, as there will also be questions from the panel!

To help you get started, let’s think about some of our key user requirements. Remember that we have two key audiences for the BattArray application. The main consumers are going to be riders and the suppliers will be our charge station vendors.

Rider Requirements

Riders will want to be able to:

Use GPS to show location of nearby partner stores and distance from current location. Browse partnered stores in a manually selected location. View the information of a selected partner store (store name, battery count, inventory and price) Book a battery before arrival or exchange impromptu on arrival. Pay for the service inside the application or select an option to pay by cash.

Vendor Requirements

Vendors will want to be able to:

View their battery inventory health and percentage View the estimated charge time of their inventory Show the estimated cost to charge and the recommended selling price View the bookings for the batteries and estimated arrival of the rider for the pickup Accept or decline rider bookings quickly and easily within the application Auto-register exchanged batteries in the charging station (required to track batteries) Option to open and close service based on their availability. You are of course free to add more requirements in addition to the above when thinking about your group solution, particularly if you feel it will improve the user experience.

Remember that as you build out the application that we’re looking to see contributions for each deliverable from every member of the team. That means everybody should be getting hands-on with wireframes, code and preparing the final presentation deck. The skill in working together is in managing yourselves as a team and breaking down a complex problem into discrete components you can work on together in parallel!