Cross-Platform Fitness Rewards App with a Good-Will Mission

Vizer is a San Diego-based startup and mobile app founded by Samantha Pantazopoulos and Dylan Barbour with a unique mission. Vizer motivates users to achieve daily fitness goals by rewarding them with partner-sponsored donations to local food banks. When Vizer approached Notch8 in early 2019, they had a functional but unscalable MVP built with a CakePHP backend. The iOS app was ready for an overhaul to a more stable and scalable platform, as well as implementation of multiple new features required to take the app to a national audience.

To address the scalability and supportability, Notch8 migrated the application from CakePHP to Ruby on Rails.  We also implemented several new features, including:

• Integration with a variety of fitness tracking platforms and wearable devices
• Geolocation tracking for city-scoped rewards and donations
• Integrated event tracking and analytics for business-critical metrics
• Support for location-based “check-in” utilizing external bluetooth iBeacons
• Multiple UI/UX enhancements requested from the Vizer team to meet their changing business needs

As of mid-2020 Vizer is primed to move to a national level, supported by Notch8 in collaboration with Vizer developers.  Additionally, Notch8 has created an Android version of the app, released to the Google Play Store in June 2020.