Behind the scenesThe development of the new app

Xander (co-founder of Charly Cares) is mainly concerned with the design, while Diederik is the CTO (Chief Technology Officer) and, together with a development team in Serbia, provides the technology behind it. Together, they've worked on 'the new app'. The process went a lot more smoothly than last time. The result? Impressive!

What have these two been up to lately? Diederik: "We've mostly been working on improving the old app, which we've given a make-over. Especially making sure the app is more stable and faster, and the performance in general has improved quite a bit. It's the next step to what we already had."

That might sound simple, but, according to Xander, it's anything but. Because how do you come up with new features and how do you implement them? Luckily, there is a Support Team! "We've made the choice for certain improvements together with the Support Team. They receive feedback from parents and Angels. We've made sure to listen to that and convert it into new features and improvements".

The Angel calendar is one of those improved features. Especially Xander is proud of it: "I hope the new calendar has lots of positive consequences for sending and accepting booking requests from parents." Diederik: "What we've added to the calendar is that Angels can now import their private calendar. We hope this will make it easier for Angels to use, that they know where to look in the app, but also know when they are available to babysit". Sounds like a promising improvement!

“Oh, and status updates are a lot easier too!" Xander and Diederik have heard from the Support Team that some Angel already babysit for lots of different families and prefer not to receive requests from new ones. "With status updates, we've become more flexible in having babysitters on stand-by. Angels can also indicate if they want to do fixed babysitting or don't want to receive requests from new families."

If the process was as bumpy of a road as the last app? Both laugh. "We've tried to keep it as simple as possible and we've learned from the last process. That seems to be paying off". The biggest bump is yet to come, according to Diederik: "Soon, tens of thousands of people will be using the new app, so that'll be the real test!"

“Vacation!” laughs Diederik. "No, there are always points of improvement with such a launch. Those'll be our first point of focus". For Xander, the focus will be on the fixed booking requests and how they can be improved. "We've already concentrated on it quite a bit and set a special rate for it. We hope bookings will get accepted more quickly. In the future, we plan on paying even more attention to fixed babysitting." So, plenty to do and develop!