Dog's best friend

Clients, cases, orders, calendars and repeat.
Not today.
Today, I’d like to tell you about a unique app we’ve built for (fellow) dog sports enthusiasts.

Hoopers is a sport, that you can enjoy doing with your dog.
While it is similar to Agility, it focuses more on communication with the dog. It is more about running than jumping.
Also the handler, you, are not running with the dog, instead you give commands from a fixed spot.

Since we are a competitive people, naturally we need to know who is the best team:)

And this is where our app comes in.

Users

The users of our app are the women and men competitors who want to enter a competition with their dog.
Everyone has their motivation, but all agree, it is a fun way to spend your time.
Being outdoors, with your dogs and with like-minded people.

Success in a competition means points for the dog-handler team (and usually tasty treats for both:).
With enough points the team can advance to a more difficult category.

Then there are the competition organizers.
They are the ones who prepare the course, organize a referee. And in general take care of the whole event.

Finally, we have admins, who manage regional or national clubs.
They are also in charge of organizing national representation teams for European or World events.

User needs

Profile

The competitor needs a quick way to create his or hers profile and keep it uptodate.
This includes all the information about their dogs.

The signup is nothing fancy. Competitors can also sign-up with their Google account, one less password to remember.

Level-up

Dogs earn points for successfully completing a course. The progress can also be tracked on the dog's profile page.
With enough points are collected, the team can advance into a more demanding category.

Competition

Users can regularly check the app for new competitions and of course register.
The map view and calendar views allow the sportsmen and women to quickly see what’s close-by.
Of course more information, like who is the referee, number of runs and other info is also accessible.

Registration

The actual registration is straightforward. Clicking the Register Dogs button and choosing dogs is all that is needed.

Payment

From the dog registration dialog the competitor can pay the event entry fee.
We built support for both Slovakian and Czech banking apps, so the payment is just a quick scan of an QR code.

Creating a competition

Organizers, which is in fact all app users, can organize a new event in a few clicks.
There are a few required fields, like the time & place of the event, referee and number of runs.
The organizer can set a per dog entry price and his/hers IBAN account where the competitors can send the fees.

Before the event can be published, the organizer has to pay a small fee to the club admins.
Organizers can top-up their club-credit in the app or it is handled as part of their club-membership.

Event management

Once the competition is underway, the organizer can update the team results.
The app will calculate the penalty points and assign a final standing based on points and time.

All competitors can watch the results in realtime on their devices too.

When the event is completed, points for successful competitors are automatically assigned.

Who's a good boy

There are many interesting challenges in building an app like this.

It is an app that is used heavily, but only during specific times.
Easy of use, discoverability and intuitive UX is therefore crucial.

Since the app is used during the actual events too, realtime updates were a required feature.
For less tech-savvy (or foreign) competitors, printed result sheets were also needed.

Finally introducing payments without credit-cards was refreshing.
It is nice to see banking innovation in our parts of the world.
Hope to see even more.

We trully enjoy solving interesting problems, and honestly, this one is right up there.
If you have other interesting problems you need solving, we'd love to hear about it.

Happy running!