Mindance

In recent years, the mental well-being of employees has become a top priority for companies worldwide. Mindance has emerged as a leading player in the mental health app market, providing essential tools that foster well-being and boost productivity among working professionals.

The global mental health apps market is expected to reach 6.83 billion dollars by 2024, driven significantly by increased app downloads during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mindance’s mission is to enhance the mental well-being and professional development of users at various life and career stages. Offering over 1,000 interactive courses, exercises, and podcasts in multiple languages, their platform serves a diverse audience, including executives and young professionals. These tools promote health, personal development, and employee engagement.

Year

2023

Country

Germany

Team

3 people

Commits

7526

Development

35 weeks

Challenge

Our journey with Mindance began through a prior collaboration on the startup Clay, which later merged with Mindance after its acquisition by pme Familienservice Group. This merger prompted the development of a new, integrated B2B2C product.

Based on the project scope, we have encountered three key challenges.

1. Security Protocols. Working under a large corporation required stringent security measures, including secure VPN access for developers.

2. Microservices Architecture. Managing numerous small, isolated repositories led to issues with code duplication and version control.

3. User Subscriptions. Each user can have several subscriptions, each providing different access to the application's features. We had to implement the right logic for this and handle it both on the backend and frontend.

Process

Operating under an outstaffing model, we provided Mindance with dedicated IT resources, enabling them to manage the project’s budget and timeline effectively while benefiting from our technical expertise.

Mindance approached us to develop a new mobile and web application with an outstaff project model. Our team was tasked with transitioning the legacy and user base from the remnants of two previous projects to create a robust platform and enhance it with features for a better user experience.

Although our development team of 3 people focused primarily on mobile and web applications, we managed full-stack responsibilities, implementing testing protocols, automated deployment processes, and app publishing.

Solution

To address security challenges, Mindance provided personal VPNs to each developer, ensuring compliance with pme Familienservice's policies and secure server access.

Instead of one large repository containing all the code, our team used 16 repositories, where each developer is responsible for a separate task. To resolve issues with code duplication and version control, we established common repositories for shared components, centralizing references and reducing redundancy.

Our team developed a robust backend system to manage multiple user subscriptions effectively. On the frontend, we ensured that the user interface reflects the various subscriptions accurately, providing users with a seamless experience tailored to their access levels.

Key features we implemented to enhance user experience included:

Onboarding. A personalized onboarding process where users select their interests, ensuring relevant content display.
Gamification. Users earn virtual "water droplets" by completing tasks like courses and logging in consecutively to grow a virtual tree. When the tree is fully grown, the company donates to environmental causes, and the user starts anew.
Admin Tools. Our team developed an admin panel with news and event planning tools, enhancing platform utility for subscribing companies.

Success for Mindance from a:

We integrated seamlessly with Mindance’s internal team and systems, facilitating a smooth workflow and effective communication despite the challenges of secure VPN access and a complex corporate environment.

Our developers overcame the complexities of working with microservices architecture and numerous repositories. This allowed for greater modularity and scalability of the application, addressing one of the core technical challenges of the project.

Implementing automated deployment and managing app publishing demonstrated our capability to handle critical aspects of the software development lifecycle, ensuring that updates were rolled out efficiently and without disruption.

With a high user rating of 4.8 on the AppStore and trust from over 1,400 companies across various industries, the platform has proven its importance in enhancing employee well-being. Customers of Mindance value the internal newsfeed for employee communication and the booking function for organizing corporate events. Meanwhile, app users appreciate gamification activities that help them overcome stress and feel satisfied.

Our continued collaboration with Mindance aims to enhance user engagement and satisfaction further.