A conversion of an iOS app to Android

BoltAffect helps a worldview curriculum company convert their custom iOS app that took over a year to build to an Android app in just a few weeks.

Meet the client

Interactive worldview curriculum

b4Worldview produces worldview curriculum to challenge young minds to think critically about how they perceive the world and uncover their fundamental assumptions. They provide their curriculum using interactive systems that help guide students in an engaging way, including the Traction interactive adventure game.

The Challenge

Reaching students with Android devices

b4Worldview spent eighteen months building their Traction app and getting it launched to the Apple App Store. Unfortunately they built the app using Apple's proprietary Swift programming language. This meant that their app wasn't compatible with Android and couldn't be put on the Google Play Store.

Primary Challenge

Make their iOS app available to Android users.

Rebuild the app

The app had to be rebuilt so that it could be made available to android users.

Budget & Timeline

b4Worldview needed a solution that was both fast and affordable to rebuild their entire app.

Our Process

b4Worldview needed to get their iOS app rebuilt for Android as quickly and cost effectively as possible. Our Dream to Doneski approach ensured that a massive planning oversight for their app ended with a smooth landing.

The Solution: Cross Platform React Native Development

An iOS app can not simply walk into the Android store. The app needed to be rebuilt. Our engineers reverse engineered the Swift app and rebuilt it.

Asset Gathering

BoltAffect worked directly with b4Worldview to get all their graphic design assets that they used for the iOS app. We also worked to understand the project budget and the timeline for launching the app.

Reverse Engineering

The Traction app is a dynamic app that is loaded with curriculum formatted as a choose your own adventure story. So depending on user answers the application selects the next appropriate screen. We reverse engineered this logic and additionally took screenshots of every unique screen in the iOS app.

Construction

Using the cross-platform React Native development system we rebuilt the app, helped b4Worldview get their Google Play Store account setup, and the app launched in a matter of weeks.

The Results: A Matching Android App

Access to more customers who expected both Apple and Android support

b4Worldview now has a unified codebase that can be deployed to both Apple and Android devices. This allows them to serve both users. It also allowed them to court larger institutional customers that expected support of both device types.

iOS Parity

The Android app that we built was nearly identical to the iOS app, with the exception of Android UI heuristics.

Budget

We did a back of the napkin estimate of $6,400 and delivered the app for $7,000. This put the project well below our 20% overrun buffer.

Timeline

From when b4Worldview first contacted us to delivery of the Android app to the Google Play Store was only five weeks.