Tobu Skydive
Tobu was created to provide a cost-effective alternative to current skydiving altimeters and trackers. It leverages the phone's sensors to track altitude, location, and acceleration to track and log skydives accurately.
The project consisted of four main parts:
Mobile App
Due to the project's specific needs, we developed Tobu using Apple's native development languages and tools. It uses the phone's gyroscope, accelerometer, GPS, and barometer to autonomously calculate falling rates, speed, glide ratio, and trajectory for every skydive. It also processes subscription payments using Apple's in-app purchases.
The app has received positive feedback and significantly impacted the skydiving community worldwide, with roughly 200 users.
Website
As a product, Tobu Skydive had specific requirements to support and guide users throughout the customer journey, starting from awareness and marketing to support. We needed to create a landing page that outlines the main features and characteristics in a compelling way to provide all the information visitors required while increasing engagement and desire that would lead to downloading the mobile app.
Additionally, it required blog capabilities to easily add new articles explaining how to use the app and perform basic troubleshooting. The blog takes markdown as input that is automatically converted into HTML and groups each entry by category on the support page.
The website was built responsive first, focusing on loading speed, user experience, and accessibility. Following Google's guidelines and recommendations, we have achieved a rating above 90% in each PageSpeed Insights category for mobile and desktop.
Admin Portal
To support Tobu users, we built an admin portal that only employees could access. The portal allows employees to check user and skydive information, display usage data, and update information if needed. The portal reduced the time required for support per skydive by 60%.
Branding and merchandising
As a new app, we had to consider functionality and branding. We wanted Tobu to be associated with technology in the skydiving industry. The name Tobu means "to fly" in Japanese. It was important that skydivers felt identified by Tobu's passion for skydiving, and the slogan "Fly with us. Fly with Tobu" was born. We created marketing material for social media and YouTube, skydiving jerseys, t-shirts, stickers, and other skydiving merchandise.
Tobu Skydive was a challenging but rewarding project that required a deep understanding of skydivers' needs, technical knowledge, and creativity to provide a solution that didn't result in excessive costs or additional distractions. We had to step away from the product to provide a solution that covered all the aspects of building a project from scratch and launching it to the market. Tobu is now used on all continents, and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
We are still actively working on Tobu to bring it to Android devices and to provide additional tools for skydiving centre's owners and operators to promote safety and skills progression.
