We worked with Dallas-based non-profit organization OurCalling and AT&T to build an app that allowed community members to quickly and reliably act as a resource for the homeless in Dallas. Research showed that information overload and poor UX experiences were preventing community members from taking action on the go, so our strategy centered around reducing friction in both of these areas. Our goal was to integrate all of the data and knowledge OurCalling had about homelessness in Dallas into a robust digital product that was trustworthy, reliably quick and easy to use.

In order to make the app feel intuitive on the front-end, we needed a clean, organized backend with fast search result capability. We also wanted to think about the app’s growth and scalability as new resources were added in the future.

All of this played a large role in determining which framework we wanted to use and ultimately led us to build with Ruby on Rails. It’s quick to get off the ground and allowed us to easily change and add new features as they were requested by OurCalling.