InHerSight

Helping women achieve their career goals more effectively through a mobile app

Icon of a triangle with an exclimation mark in the middle

Challenge

Building a new mobile app to provide an enhanced user experience for women seeking job opportunities and career advancement

Icon of a location marker with five dashes coming out from the top

Outcome

Reduced time to market by 50%, upskilled team in react native development, launched mobile app in both Apple and Google Play stores at the same time.

Screenshots of the InHerSight application

Four screens from the InHerSight project on a blue background; a home screen, matches screen, community screen, profile screen

Who is InHerSight?

InHerSight was launched in 2015 to improve the workplace for women by measuring those features of a workplace that are most relevant for women employees. 

They built a platform to measure how well companies support women employees by using anonymized crowd-sourced feedback.  

InHerSight reached out to thoughtbot after receiving additional funding in 2019. The founders wanted to expand the user experience for their audience by providing a companion mobile experience.  The goal of the new mobile application was to make their career services and community more accessible to women and increase longer-term engagement with their users.

Quote from the client about the InHerSight project

thoughtbot is a trusted technical partner that helped us build a high-quality mobile application, upskill our internal team’s mobile skills, and taught us all how to work more efficiently together

A headshot of Ursula Mead

Ursula Mead
CEO and Founder

The Challenge

Prior to engaging with thoughtbot, InHerSight (IHS) had built an impressive platform for women to research employee reviews of companies, career advice through content, and data tools for employers to assess. 

In 2019, InHerSight wanted to explore ways to increase community engagement beyond the job search phase and build longer-term relationships with their growing user-base.  They had a strong vision for an engaging mobile app, but their engineering team did not have the requisite experience to achieve all of their goals.  It was critical for them to find the right technology partner to help them achieve their goal and teach them how to improve their mobile skills along the way.

They looked at several possible solutions but decided on thoughtbot. Why thoughtbot? First, because of our high-quality product design and development. Second, because thoughtbot offered full-time integration with their team. Third, because they had become familiar with some of the local thoughtbot team members.

Photos from the InHerSight product design sprint

Three images of the InHerSight design sprint; a critical path journey on  a whiteboard, post-its gathered together from how might we exercise, an assumptions test table on the whiteboard

The Solution

thoughtbot kicked off the project with a Product Design Sprint (PDS) to align team goals, clarify strategy, and validate the initial core set of features. 

thoughtbot facilitated a series of design thinking exercises, explored some new concepts, and collaborated with the IHS team to build out a clickable prototype that was tested with real users at the end of the week. The results from the PDS helped clarify core features, defined the initial roadmap for their mobile MVP, and initiated a strong collaborative relationship between thoughtbot and IHS.

Immediately after the design sprint, thoughtbot collaborated with the IHS team to help make critical architecture infrastructure decisions for the project. We chose React Native, a cross-platform framework, for the mobile application build. Throughout the project, thoughtbot consulted with the IHS team and continuously updated an architecture decision document to ensure knowledge could be passed on to other team members within their organization.

In addition to leading strategic architecture decisions, thoughtbot built the front-end React Native portion of the mobile app working side by side with IHS’s design and backend team.  thoughtbot participated in daily stand ups, provided guidance around process improvements, and facilitated weekly retrospectives to ensure that team expectations were being met.

During the development stage of the project, thoughtbot created lessons and tutorials for the IHS development team and walked them through the codebase to ensure that the team would be able to gain the necessary skills in React Native development.  At the end of the project, the IHS team was able to manage the mobile application’s pull requests and ongoing production support successfully on their own.

Quote from the client about the InHerSight project

The best part of working with thoughtbot was how they seamlessly integrated with our team, cared what we were doing, and their commitment to making our product great

A headshot of Daniel Stapelton

Daniel Stapelton
CCO and Co-Founder

The Outcome

Partnering with thoughtbot, InHerSight was able to:

  • Reduce the time to market by 50%
  • Launch a high-quality mobile application that was well received by their end-users
  • Build their internal team’s enthusiasm and confidence to successfully maintain and continue ongoing React Native development
  • Provide professional development for their internal team’s knowledge and skillsets around React Native and mobile best practices
  • Build a strategic architectural roadmap for easy reference, transition, and long-term stability for their future.

Quote from the client about the InHerSight project

We were impressed with the level of thoughtfulness and care thoughtbot brought into the office from day one.

A headshot of Ursula Mead

Ursula Mead
CEO and Founder

What does success look like for your project?