Vitto: building the first Android app

Android Engineer2021Jun 2020 - Sep 20211 min read

Joined as the first Android hire, built multilingual voice onboarding, and ran Google Play open testing with 300 users.

  • 300 users
    Open-testing cohort

Role and cohort size are from my resume. The company raised USD 200K in pre-seed funding; the app contributed to that stage, but I don't attribute the raise to Android work alone.

My contribution

  • Built the Android app as the team's first Android engineer.
  • Implemented multilingual onboarding using Android Text-to-Speech.
  • Ran Google Play open testing with 300 users.
  • Worked on CI/CD and helped grow the Android team.

Overview

Vitto was my first Android role. I built the consumer app early in the company's life and helped establish its Android delivery process.

Problem

The team needed a usable Android product and feedback from people outside the company.

Constraints

  • Product requirements were still developing.
  • Onboarding needed to support multiple languages.

Approach

  • Built the initial Android implementation.
  • Used Android Text-to-Speech for multilingual onboarding.
  • Released to a 300-user open-testing cohort on Google Play.

Implementation notes

Android Text-to-Speech for onboarding

Reasoning

Voice support gave users another way to follow the onboarding steps.

Google Play open testing

Reasoning

It put the app in users' hands before a wider release.

Tech stack

  • Kotlin
  • Android
  • Text-to-Speech
  • Google Play Console
  • CI/CD

Result and impact

The company gained its first Android app and a way to collect feedback through Google Play.

Learnings

  • A first mobile hire has to think about releases and feedback as well as implementation.
  • Putting an early version in users' hands makes the next priorities clearer.
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