Work Details
The App Architect
A field app that demoed well and fell over on site. We rebuilt it offline-first, with a sync layer the team can reason about and a release pipeline they trust.
- Client
- Architect Labs
- Industry
- Field Services
- Services
- Mobile Apps
- Deliverables
- iOS & Android
- Tools
- React Native
Designed For The Places With No Signal
Field engineers work in basements and on sites with no coverage, and the prototype assumed a connection at every step. We rebuilt around local writes, a sync queue that survives a killed process, and conflict rules the product team signed off before a line was written.
Field Research
Two weeks shadowing engineers to see where and how the app actually gets used.
Offline Model
Local-first data with a replayable sync log and agreed conflict rules.
Test Harness
Simulated network drops at the exact points that used to lose data.
Release Pipeline
Automated builds, staged rollouts, and crash alerts on the existing on-call rota.
Bugs Nobody Could Reproduce
Every sync failure looked identical from a support ticket, because the outcome depended on exactly when the network dropped.
Releases went out whenever the team felt safe, which in practice meant rarely and under pressure.
A Sync Layer You Can Replay
Deterministic sync backed by a log the team can replay, so a reported failure becomes a reproducible test rather than a guess.
With the harness in place, the release moved to a scheduled weekly build and stayed there.