Since the beginning of this year we’ve engaged in several client-based projects. Taking on client work does a few things: it helps us meet our revenue goals and it forces us to solve problems we might not encounter on our own.
We’ve recently completed work for Avinger, a life-scinece company out of Redwood City, California. Avinger came to us looking to advance their sales process by using the iPad. We worked with them to create two new apps, Soapbox and Checkbox.

Soapbox: the presenter.
Soapbox is a straight-forward presentation app that allows Avinger to quickly distribute sales presentations to their sales team across the US. Content is distributed using a Dropbox backend, interfacing directly with Soapbox. Files are updated and users are notified within the app, ensuring the most up-to-date data on Avinger’s products. Great care was put into how the information is presented, instead of displaying PDFs as pages, Soapbox presents them as slides, complete with interactions that correspond to that style of presentation. Key to Soapbox’s success is a distribution system that allows sales members to pick items to share with medical professionals. Once selected items are gathered into an HTML-rich email and sent out as linked documents.

Checkbox: delightful forms.
Checkbox is the counter-part to Soapbox. It allows Avinger’s sales team to collect meaningful data from the field in order to be more effective in communicating their message. Checkbox was built by leveraging the Wufoo form API, allowing Avinger to quickly and effectively add and edit forms without having to reissue a new build of the app. Checkbox also submits data instantly back to Wufoo, allowing Avinger to run reports at-will. Our goal with Checkbox was to bring delight in completing forms, a task that is normally begrudged by most.
Avinger: a rare breed of company.
Avinger is a rare breed of company. They placed key stakeholders on the project, effective personnel as project leads and had confidence in us to providing the best solution. This allowed us to collectively start and execute the project in a very small window of time—all while enjoying working together. Avinger has set a high bar for the type of client relationships that we’ll look for going forward.
If you have an interesting project and would like to talk about it we’d love to hear from you.