Homer is a Stockholm, Sweden-based provider of services for householders who need to keep the information about everything in their homes in neat order. The service supports collecting and storing data on users’ housing in general and on their property specifically in a simple and safe way. Then, it provides useful content to users based on their input. It is available for use on mobile iOS and Android devices and as a web app.
Over the past two years, Vilmate and Homer partnered to develop a solution capable of making life easier for homeowners. People around the globe, every now and then, may feel frustrated when getting drowned in tons of paperwork stored in their homes. Warranties, receipts, user manuals, maps and more — it is natural to start overlooking and losing things. People needed an easy-to-use tool that would allow managing all important information in one place and make it fast and simple for everyone.
At the time the Vilmate-Homer cooperation started, our partner company had a strong vision statement and supporting detailed answers on how the product should look and function. The project had already been under development for about six months then and our client was looking to turn a small prototype they had into a solid product, improve the existing features and provide new advanced ones. Given the benefits that Vilmate offers as an experienced outstaffing vendor, we became Homer’s partner of choice.
Heavily challenged by the client’s need to scale up and transform, Vilmate started setting up a project team by involving 1 ReactNative developer for iOS platform and 1 backend developer. Over time, the team was being augmented to now comprise 3 mobile (ReactNative for iOS and Android) developers, 2 backend software engineers, 1 web developer, and 1 QA specialist.
From the end of November 2017, the Vilmate team’s active involvement in the project has been yielding positive results. With a prototype of an application as a starting point, our team has managed to develop a fully functional multi-layered system. Presently, it comprises two main components. These are an app per se, which is filled with plenty of helpful features, and the microservice architecture introducing a dispersed set of services centered around data creation, processing, and delivery to application end-users. Many features and subprojects were created from scratch and a lot of already existing ones were improved and even reimplemented by us. The mobile iOS and Android versions of the Homer application have been integrated with the native functionality of mobile operating systems.
The most outstanding features and benefits that our development team implemented include the following:
As a consequence of the well-coordinated work, these elements together have made a finely structured application. Homer was developed into a system that can be used collaboratively by its users, meaning that the householder and other members of this household can share content with each other without having to submit information manually. For the ease of convenience, users are provided with a clean and modern user interface that allows managing notifications, as well as adding, consuming, updating and sharing content seamlessly.
Presently, the app is steadily gaining traction and the number of Homer’s monthly active users keeps growing.
Node.js - for structuring business logic
React Native - for both iOS & Android mobile apps
Native iOS SDK - for implementing custom native modules
GraphQL - for the API layer
MySQL - for the database layer
MongoDB - for the cache layer and operation information
Redis - for the cache layer, session store and message queue
Sentry, FB, Firebase, Google Analytics, and other integration libraries
Vilmate’s teaming with Homer has given rise to mobile applications for iOS and Android and allowed the web app to become firmly established. The client has received part of the features and functionality envisioned and the project remains subject to continuous improvement. The said features were delivered by us in fine quality, on time, and on budget. Our development team optimized software performance by using the most advanced frameworks and libraries. Delivering a customized mobile and web experience, Homer is a versatile tool now that can be effectively used by anyone in Sweden.
