Developing for performance, scalability, and safety

The Norwegian maritime IoT company ScanReach has developed a revolutionary technology for wireless connectivity in steel environments. Apart from being ScanReach's strategic and hands-on design and innovation partner, EGGS have also contributed to developing a performant and scalable front-end for their wireless connected safety solution – Connect POB.

The ConnectPOB solution works by wirelessly connecting crew members on the ship to sensors that send information about their localisation to a central unit. The data is presented in real-time on the dashboard on the ship's bridge for an instant personnel overview during training and emergencies. The same data is also presented in the cloudConnectFleet, where all users can access the information.In the case of an emergency, it can save lives, which is why it's essential that the data flow between front and back-end is reliable.

Complexity that requires early tech involvement

Digital projects with a high grade of complexity require early involvement of both designers and developers to be successful. In Connect POB’s case, we worked with back-end and front-end in parallel together with ScanReach, to be able to quickly prototype and iterate on ideas. Moreover, we helped define and build a performant and scalable front-end architecture that can easily be expanded and modified as the demands change and develop over time.

The right technology choices vital to ensure safety

In addition to complexity, the safety aspect of the Connect POB solution made it extra important to ensure the right technology choices were made from the start. As the application is used in emergencies to help save lives, it's indispensable that users have trust in what we have built. A hick-up can mean the loss of life. Hence, the balance between having development momentum and still making sure we were not pushing updates that had room for errors was vital.

Close collaboration and prototyping with designers

By working with both front and back-end development in parallel as well as together with the design team, we could test and prototype the solution early and continuously. Using ScanReach’s hardware, we were able to simulate a proper ship environment in our offices in Trondheim and thereby continuously test our solution while developing.

This is valuable both for developers and designers, as the mutual feedback and input enable adjustments and corrections early in the process. Having physical design prototypes also helps simulate the real experience and generate useful insight.