Diffco US Inc

Fredd is a sophisticated and smart product, into which our professional team has put all its experience in the field of haute cuisine and the restaurant business. We wanted to find a team of professionals in mobile development and AI to implement all our ideas at the highest possible level in the form of intelligent algorithms, plus a convenient and functional mobile app with good design. We are delighted to work with the Diffco team. Together with Diffco, we live this product as we discuss, implement and test new functions, to see the app becoming better and better.

I am Vitaly Kirkpatrick, CEO and Founder of CloviTek Inc, the wireless device manufacturing company that builds wireless audio transmitters for streaming audio from TVs over WiFi to mobile devices. I am repsonsible for overseeing the operations, sales and management.

Our team had built a hardware device that is capable of streaming audio. We had Engineers who were able to do feasibility testing to make sure that this is something that would be possible to do. However, our Engineers did not know much about mobile app development. We had to look for outside developers to help with the project. We had the challenge to identify the best developers for this technical project out of multiple companies that could offer Linux software development and mobile app development for iOS and Android mobile devices.

We wanted the app to be able to receive an audio signal from a TV and decode it in the mobile device so people could use their headphones to hear any TV out of multiple TVs available within one network area. With this solution, our goal was to test the market need for the product so we could go into full production and sales.

We worked with a couple of software development teams before. Unfortunately, they under-delivered and their product was not ready for release and sales due to poor design. However, the Diffco team was able to present the solution that had not just functional capabilities we were looking for, but also a modern look and a friendly user interface. It was clear to us, that Diffco team was capable of solving not only technical problems with audio streaming over WiFi, but also user's usability problems which were presented to us in the first design phase.

Once we selected Diffco to be our developer, we started the initial design phase. They were very quick in providing their deliveries for each phase of the development. After consulting with us and presenting their UI designs for the mobile app, we moved forward with the mockups development to test the functionality. The app mockups were delivered specifically for iOS and Android platforms within their native frameworks. Those mockups included the company's branding (colors, logos, images, etc.) to match our website, which Diffco developed and built for us as well.

From the beginning, I was speaking with the project manager who was very knowledgeable and understood the requirements which he delivered to his team. However, as the development of the project progressed, the team involved the Linux developer and the mobile developer to our remote meetings. Sometimes we needed to talk to their Engineer as well, which they provided to us for solving more challenging problems.

After working on the product and mobile app for a year, we had our first prototype developed. We've demonstrated it at various shows and received multiple innovation awards for design, functionality, and usability of the product. When we were able to go online, Diffco team developed our website based on the Shopify platform. We started seeing the sales of the product. However, we could not ship the product yet. Only two years later, with the help of the Diffco team in collaboration with CloviTek's Engineers, we started shipping our first orders to our customers. There were a few issues with the product and the app, which were addressed by Diffco in a timely manner.

The Diffco's project manager was located in the U.S., however, their development team was located offshore. The project manager was able to address all of our questions with our management quickly without the need to involve their offshore team to weekly calls. If there were more challenging questions to be addressed by their offshore team, we had in-house team members who spoke their language and were successful communicating issues with the app. A lot of the challenging technical issues with the mobile app were addressed successfully by showing via video recordings or conferences rather than telling about specific issues.

I was impressed by their technical knowledge skills their team had. They also know a lot about user experiences. The mobile app had an excellent UI design and functionality. Their biggest strength is they address issues quickly and communicate the outcomes to our team, resolving them if needed.

Some of the ideas during the process could have been explored and considered. Because of their own belief that they know the mobile app development best and that they have the technical expertise to solve challenging problems, some of the suggestions were dismissed and never pursued. They are an amazing team and I am retaining them for other projects. But, maybe having an open mind to suggestions could help them in a long time dealing with other customers. Delivering something out of extraordinary and learning something new outside of their comfort zone, would help them develop the skills that maybe other customers would need for other projects.