About the project

Vyvyn is a global online learning platform where an individual student can learn from a well-experienced private tutor from anywhere in the world. All sessions are live and one-on-one classes, with the addition of optional Group Classes. Only passionate teachers are listed on Vyvyn. Their expertise includes both academic and non-academic fields. Registration is free for both students and teachers.

Technical information

We designed the system based on Amazon Web Services, including DynamoDB, EC2 Auto Scaling, S3 and Elasticsearch. This solution allows flexibility in expanding the system and saves on operating costs. We chose JavaScript as the main language for ease of scaling and upgrading the system, with AngularJS for Web app, NodeJS for API. Regarding mobile platforms, we developed iOS version with Swift and Android version with Kotlin.

System functions

For an interactive, immersive and customized learning experience, the app offers 3 modes:

• InstaGuru: A student can book and study a single topic very quickly with a matched teacher.
• Schedule a Guru: A student subscribes to a teacher from their available time slots as set by the teacher based on his or her availability.
• Group Class: A student can choose to learn with a maximum of 9 other students, with extensive collaborating features.

Challenges

Technical challenges:

• Flexibility for different types of online courses and topics with different features and requirements
• Ability to handle large number of users, easy and fast scaling
• Optimized streaming for video-based and live courses
• Flexible payment methods and high data security

Project challenges:

• The client has previously experienced a failure in outsourcing their project development to a third-party. They need a partner that can they can trust in dealing with the problems that they faced in their past project, which mainly involved commitment and communication issues from the service provider and their developers.

Solutions

Our filtering and evaluation process for service providers in our network allows Itop to find software companies that shows a strong level of commitment to our projects and clients. We provided a team of 6 vetted developers from a trusted partner that had already work with us on 5 projects at that point. In addition, because of our large number of projects offered to this particular company, they prioritize our projects with their most capable developers and excellent customer support. We also managed to facilitate efficient communication between the development team and the client by having a dedicated Account Manager assigned to the project, solving all potential issues along the way.