The Spoke. A Smarter Way to Search
Executive Summary
Right now, search results are based on millions of queries and marketing dollars. The problem is that search engine results often don’t fit users’ queries and expectations.
However, people mostly get the best recommendations from their friends and relatives. Still, frequently they use ancient methods like texting, emailing and posting on Facebook to gather them, and then they need to figure out where to stream a movie, reserve a table or order takeout.
But what will happen when The Spoke comes? The Spoke connects us with recommendations from friends & tastemakers and tells us where to reserve, order or stream them! Users can create an entertainment list, share the list with friends, and follow the lists of other users.
Now Streaming
About The Spoke
The Spoke is a massive user portal with personal lists of movies, dishes, festivals, fun & games, and other entertainment topics, which users can keep in a safe place and share with their friends. The Spoke’s method of building a search engine is focused on allowing searchers to access personalized content from the people users trust the most. The Spoke works like Spotify, where users can create or follow any list.
However, instead of lists of songs, they can follow lists of movies, restaurants, books, and more. After following their friends, their search results for them will be based on their friends’ favorites, and they can watch a movie or reserve a table with one click.
Based on your taste
Challenge
The primary customer need was to create an initial product version that they could use for fundraising and to acquire an initial user base. So, La’Soft had to develop wireframes, offer a UI/UX solution, and build an HTML layout.
We provided front-end & back-end development services. An experienced project manager was assigned to lead and coordinate the project so our client would see incredible results.
Solution
Our team helped The Spoke with analysis, creating fresh ideas, and improving the project during the implementation process. Our solution is reliable and will last when the product comes across any difficulties or accelerated growth.
“It was hard to find quality engineering talent for the right price. Lots of people pretended they were quality companies, but when we interviewed them, they ended up being underqualified.
LaSoft has been great in establishing a long-term partnership and has committed to helping us get to the next level by acquiring top talent if needed.”
Movies
Search
Search recommendations from friends and influencers and get a perfect match based on the user's preferences. By typing a movie’s name into a search bar, the user gets a result page with a list of movies that fit their query.
Watch
Discover
With The Spoke there is a bunch of ways to discover new movies to watch. The most effective one is to look for a recommendation from users' close friends. So, to give better advice, The Spoke allows users to discover people followed by their friends.
People followed by your friends
People you may know
Follow
The Spoke shows people a list of users that could potentially be interesting for them. When they start following new people and their list, it extends a range of opportunities in searching for the best fits.
View
Users can check top lists of movies, follow them for future updates, and filter by score, genre, and streaming services to find the perfect fit.
Create
Every user can create their own list of movies, sort by category, share with friends and follow other users' lists. Owners can edit or delete their lists.
EAT & DRINK
Look
Users can look for a restaurant in the search bar or rely on feedback from their friends. Furthermore, it is helpful to discover a list of users who have become experts in the food domain.
Find
Using a map users can discover the best places close to their location, and see additional info like the place’s exact location or ratings.
Close by
Share
Share best places to eat with users, sort them by categories, and get recommendations from friends.
Taste
The Spoke encourages users to rate restaurants to help their friends and improve suggestions for them. Because the more users rate, the smarter The Spoke becomes.
Results
Our team was assigned to help The Spoke quickly build the product for a very affordable price. Tom Stern, Co-Founder of The Spoke, said that the La’Soft team’s performance exceeded his expectations, and it was a great reward for us to hear that. We have succeeded in establishing a long-term partnership with The Spoke, and committed to help them get to the next level by acquiring top talent if needed.
Developers’ Insights
“I like the idea of The Spoke because it contains all books, restaurants, film services, and more, and will continue to expand its scope. Users don't have to remember a lot of separate services anymore. They just shouldn't forget The Spoke.
By migrating to Mobx, we have found a way to optimize the data transfer. We used styled components for style descriptions, so now we have a core of UI components and can easily reuse them where it is needed.
Using a lazy loading pattern helped us accelerate a website loading time, which is crucial for users with a bad internet connection. Lazy loading implies dividing code into small parts, which will be uploaded when they are needed. In the future, we will create a native app with the help of React Native. We will be able to reuse much of the code and to speed up the application’s release.”
“Our main objective as a front-end team was to create a highly interactive, fast and reliable user interface. To accomplish this, we use React for displaying and updating data and MobX for application state management. In addition to rendering performance benefits, these libraries considerably improved loading time and reduced app bundle size by splitting it into route-based reusable components.”
“The Spoke is an exciting and quite challenging project from a design standpoint. Our goal is to make a super handy product for a generation of users who expect results that match their taste extremely fast. This is why we need to move fast as well. We plan, brainstorm, design, test, talk to users, and start over again. Being very user oriented, we are going to iterate until we meet users’ expectations and build something great.”
Client’s Feedback
“LaSoft helped us really revolutionize the way we are developing. Everything from the user interface all the way through development, they had everything covered for us, every resource that we were missing, that we were desperately trying to fill. They are able to fill the gap for us.”
“From design to development, again they have taken on the full process. They’ve done such a good job, that we’ve recently raised half a million US dollars to continue development. And we’re now establishing a long-term relationship with our team at La’Soft. We are extremely excited to build this amazing product!”
