Easy creation of aesthetic branded content, even without a design skills

We kicked the project off in June 2021, taking full ownership of developing an MVP in a dedicated cross-functional team. The client conducted his work beforehand, including ideation, competition analysis, and user research. They also provided us with high-fidelity mockups and a backlog of deliverables. 

The discovery phase with workshops and scoping sessions furnished the Merixstudio team with the product goals and the business context. The product requirements necessitated using the Scrum and waterfall methodologies. Cyclically, we conducted planning and review meetings with the client, showing them the MVP and features. 

Our design and development teams were also in constant dialogue and discussion to facilitate knowledge exchange and synchronisation of various works. A 7-person project team covered all bases, from the MVP stage to the execution.

We based the frontend of the developed solution on Next.js. Our product team used the React-Redux combo for state management, taking advantage of its flexible setup. Thanks to utilizing the Scene.js library, we significantly reduced the development time. We were also able to create the UI elements and scale and drag-and-drop objects, not needing to code everything anew.

We relied on the Django and Django Rest Framework duo on the backend. It gave the project the structure necessary for smooth operations. That included embedded tools for migrations, a ready-to-use admin panel, Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) capabilities, and extensive community support for external libraries, to mention just a few.

We also didn’t shy away from using the tried-and-tested PostgreSQL for storing the JSON data. Regarding back-end task processing, we bet on Redis in conjunction with the Celery worker. Thanks to asynchronous task consumption, we ensured the load on the app was not too high at a time when it was not necessary.

They’re very interested in pushing the project forward by bringing their knowledge to the table.

The dragNdrop solution heavily utilises third-party integrations. We used the Stripe API to integrate payment options across the back-end and front-end. The Mailchimp Marketing API allowed us to synchronise the e-mail marketing activities with the database. We also integrated the Google Fonts Developer API and Google and Facebook for logging in. The Unsplash API’s photo engine allowed users to upload high-quality images for their designs. 

As far as Quality Assurance goes, we used several test strategies. We relied on automated functional tests at the beginning of the project to ensure that the API works as intended. Then, our team tested the app manually to determine whether it acts in accordance with the pre-defined requirements. GUI testing, in turn, gave us the confidence that the interface functions well.

The product also benefited from our DevOps engineers’ support. We set up an AWS Lambda function to relieve the EC2 instance (on which the app is built) from resources, thus allowing for a greater task volume and better execution velocity. This way, the serverless solution also contributed to optimising the infrastructure costs. We also containerised the app using the AWS Elastic Container Service to address the need for independent, easily maintainable services. The Merixstudio team used Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines in GitLab and the Terraform-based Infrastructure as a Code to deploy new features fast and write the infrastructure code quickly.

From the product design perspective, we put much thought into making this product different visually from the existing tools for creating designs and making it usable for the target audience. The client envisioned it with two types of users in mind: employees of small and medium businesses and graphic designers. The customer tool is specifically crafted to prevent users from misusing the templates.

On the other hand, the designer tool allows for creative freedom and provides extensive template creation possibilities. This way, the templates look professional and accentuate the user’s brand. Catering to user needs wouldn’t be possible without preliminary user tests that we conducted and a comprehensive UX analysis. We also developed a design system based on repeatable components thanks to which the product is cohesive, and the developers’ work is much easier.

After 13 months of rewarding work hand-in-hand with the client, we created a solution ready to compete in the market. The final product lives up to the promise of providing a low entry threshold for customers that seek to use highly aesthetic marketing designs but lack the designer’s skills. They can easily apply top design practices in their brand marketing materials thanks to dragNdrop designers’ creative output. The dragNdrop web app addresses the demand for accessible branded design that’s even more imminent now, with the increased popularity of social media. 

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