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Dragontape
Developing a startup idea, a service that have quickly become popular and received an enormous amount of praise in the media.
Dragontape is a mixtape app for web video with a highly intuitive, advanced user interface. Even with the rapidly changing requirements we had a smooth and timely launch.
Requirements
We needed to develop an online video editor which can take video files from YouTube, SoundCloud etc, and the user can drag them on a clipboard where they can be trimmed, arranged and saved as a video mixtape. The user interface had to be highly intuitive so the average web user can create a mixtape easily in minutes. The created videos had to be easily shared through a unique URL or embedded into other web services, eg. Facebook.
Challenges
The main challenge was to develop an editor which can handle multiple video files at the same time, and can generate an output in a format that is usable by most internet users, while still being lightweight, fast and easy to use. The solution needed to be scalable and withstand a very heavy load.
Being a startup, the user interface was changing rapidly, and this needed great flexibility and agility.
Solutions
Being a totally unique service, it was impervious to see it in operation to make adjustments to the concept if needed. Therefore, to create a working prototype in as little time as possible, and to be able to follow the rapidly changing requirements, we have chosen the Scrum development methodology for project management.
For the front-end, we have chosen the YUI3 library as a proven toolkit for component based development. For the back-end we needed a scalable and cost-effective platform with high availability, so we built on the Google AppEngine.
Issues
There was an issue with integrating multiple YouTube flash players into the HTML and JavaScript application, which we have solved by using wrapper objects and loose coupling between components. The AppEngine Datastore requests needed to be optimised for near real time data retrieval.
Progress
The Scrum methodology proved it’s worth on such level. We have managed to launch the first working version of the service just one month after being entrusted with the project, while additional services and functions were developed in subsequent iterations in the following months.
Launch
The service had very small amount of issues after going into production, and the agile development method made it possible to release new functions very smoothly. There were two additional cycles of development in the following autumn and winter with equal success.
Results
The product has received an enormous amount of praise in the online media, been featured on
amongst others.