Novartis Community - Together in Heart Failure

Novartis wanted to go “beyond the pill,” holistically influencing patient well-being through a digital community. They asked Beyond to create them a platform that provides a powerful space for community, education, and growth, and because the product was built to scale, it could be easily applied to new brands.

The Build

The Back End was built with Python and uses Django CMS along with Django Tenants, PostgreSQL and Redis for caching. The Front uses a custom AngularJS/JSPM/Gulp Boilerplate we developed specifically for this project. JSPM is a RequireJS-style module loader with similar configuration and plugin system built on top of the ES6 Module Loader polyfill and can be used to load any module format.

For templating, we used a mix of Angular and Django, which admittedly isn’t usually an obvious choice, but due to the scale of what we were developing and the lack of SSR solutions at the time, fitted really well with this project. For styling the UI we used SCSS and followed the BEM Methodology. We developed everything Mobile First and used our own internal custom grid system. For testing we used Mocha/Chai. Django Rest Framework. App structure is modularised into very specific folders each containing .html, .scss, .js and .spec.js.

My Role

• Front End Lead/Developer for 12 months, responsible for all UI output across both the Website and the Native Mobile Apps.
• Provided estimates, scoping and technical oversight to the UX/UI Design process
• Worked closely within a product team, liaising with stakeholders and other technical leads to help flesh out requirements, provide scoping/estimations and created all relevant technical documentation.
• Ensuring the team were organised, motivated and set up for success.
• Identified and presented potential improvements and new business opportunities by assessing new platforms and technologies.
• Responsible for interviewing/hiring the necessary technical resource to reach our goals.
• Helped define and document the project’s architecture and technology stack.
• Set up a working boilerplate during Sprint 0 to validate technical feasibility of chosen stack and help expedite the development process.

Results

• 5+ minutes spent on the site by each user
• 2000+ posts from members upon launch
• 150+ new members each month