Grio

Rivals.com is a popular Yahoo-owned sports website and publishing network focused on college football and basketball recruiting. The Rivals team brought Grio on to execute a comprehensive site update that included modernizing the site design and creating a responsive, mobile-friendly web app. THE CHALLENGE Modernize Rivals’ Appearance, Performance, and Tooling Rivals wanted to improve overall site performance, boost user growth, and make it easier to publish articles and image galleries across the Rivals.com network. To accomplish these goals, Grio’s team of designers and developers needed to integrate seamlessly with Rivals’ product owners and stakeholders, who are spread out across the United States. OUR APPROACH Multifunctional Team Close Collaboration Continuous Delivery Grio and Rivals collaborated to create a new site look and feel, update the Rivals.com code base, and develop streamlined, user-friendly publishing tools. The two teams moved the project forward quickly through weekly planning sessions, daily scrums, constant online communication, and frequent retrospectives, which enabled rapid decision-making and iteration. RESULTS Better Site Performance 12x Increase in Site Traffic User-Friendly Publishing Tools New Mobile Experience The new Rivals.com codebase performs beautifully under heavy traffic—and the new homepage has seen a twelve-fold traffic lift since the update. Rivals.com publishers now operate more efficiently thanks to modern, user-friendly publishing tools, and mobile users can easily access and navigate the site through apps for both iOS and Android.

Residential pool (and spa) owners currently spend an average of 40+ hours and $1,500+ annually on maintenance. Sutro's mission is to make water management simple, safe, and seamless by allowing customers to measure, monitor, and get treatment recommendations for their water using the e Sutro Smart Monitor. With the Smart Monitor, customers simply drop an IoT device into their water and receive quality information and management instructions. Sutro tapped Grio as an innovation partner to build the app that connects to their device, which is a core functionality of their business. THE CHALLENGE Coordinate Seamlessly with a Complex Team Sutro is an early-stage startup with a small core team (whose primary skills include mechanical engineering and chemistry) supported by outsourcing partners in essential areas like manufacturing, electrical and firmware engineering, and industrial design. The Sutro mobile app would serve as the primary touchpoint for the user, and the backend for the app would also support their recommendations engine and drive the hardware. With this in mind, they chose Grio to be a central part of their team to lead technical decisions across other teams. Grio’s integrated approach and deep software expertise made us a perfect fit for the project. OUR APPROACH Agile Development and Scalable Testing Frequent Digital and In-Person Communication Focus on Customer Feedback Leveraging the agile development methodology, Grio owned the definition, prioritization, and implementation of customer requirements. We created an automated testing process that is repeatable and scalable across releases. To build trust and maintain alignment with six teams dispersed across three continents, we communicated daily through digital channels such as Zoom and Slack and held weekly in-person sprint iterations with Sutro’s local staff. In addition, Grio’s in-house design team translated beta customer feedback into user flows for the development team to work against. RESULTS Performant, User-Friendly App Sutro now has a performant, user-friendly iOS and Android app that allows users to control and monitor their Smart Monitor. Grio delivered functionality to support the complex connected hardware, along with an integrated UPC scanner that allows new customers to identify pool chemicals by their barcode. We also developed a smart chemical recommendation engine, Sutro AI, which is internal to Sutro’s App ecosystem. Finally, we provided the Sutro team with meticulous documentation for APIs and hardware flows.

Fitbit is known around the world for their personal smart devices and activity trackers. For the past several years Grio has partnered with Fitbit iOS, Android, and backend development. Grio teams have worked on a variety of Fitbit projects, including building app features for new devices as well as building out backend systems to support Fitbit devices. The Challenge Augment established, globally distributed teams Fitbit turned to Grio when they were looking for strong developers who could be brought in to bolster their own teams. As an established leader in personal devices, Fitbit development teams already have a lot of processes and procedures in place, and Grio team members need to work within that framework. Additionally, each project has its own individual challenges from technical demands like working with novel devices, to organizational challenges, like working without a lot of documentation, or collaborating on globally distributed teams. Some projects have all these challenges and more! Our Approach Work with Fitbit’s process as much as possible At Grio, we pride ourselves on our flexibility and ability to collaborate with our clients. We have our own processes, but we are also happy to work within a client's established processes - the most important thing is for teams to be productive. With Fitbit, our approach has always been to work within their constraints and fit into their teams as seamlessly as possible. This extends to physical locations as well - some of our team members work at Fitbit’s offices, while others (especially those on more globally distributed teams) might work out of Grio’s offices. The Results Over the years we’ve been proud to deliver stable and flexible products that help end users achieve their health and fitness goals. Grio has become a trusted partner for Fitbit’s engineering teams. We’re proud to have been part of more than half a dozen Fitbit product launches over the years and we look forward to a continuing successful relationship with Fitbit!

Spark Business is Capital One’s management, banking, and finance solution for small businesses. Capital One asked Grio to help them design a meaningful and effective user experience for the Spark Business marketing website and web app, and to develop a Spark Business Android app from the ground up. We also conducted extensive research to understand small business owners’ needs, and advised the Capital One design team on improvements to their general design process. THE CHALLENGE Create a great small business banking experience for web and mobile To create experiences that would resonate with their target customers, Capital One needed to understand small business owners’ pain points, mental models, and business needs; they also needed developer support to build out a new app for Android users. Finally, the company needed to optimize their internal design process, which had become scattered and inconsistent as they grew their team and evolved their approach. OUR APPROACH Research-driven design Collaborative process improvement Grio applied a variety of design thinking methods to inform the Spark Business experience - synthesizing user research results, providing a heuristic evaluation on multiple features, conducting competitive analysis, developing user personas and MVP hypotheses, and finally diving into concept explorations, prototypes, and visual design. We also helped Capital One establish a consistent style guide and implement an agile, efficient design process that included iterations of UX research, concept development, prototyping, testing, visual design, and structured collaboration with developers. RESULTS Solid foundation Great user experience The final Spark Business product provided a meaningful user experience tailored specifically for the needs of small business owners, with consistent visual and interaction design applied throughout the entire responsive web app. Grio’s design input played a critical role in shaping the site’s online application flow and Accounts, Transfers, Payments, and Invoices interfaces. Our collaboration also equipped the Capital One design team with an efficient process and clear style guide, positioning them for success on future projects.

Ceribell tapped Grio to build a medical-grade IoT platform for their novel electroencephalogram (EEG) device. Ceribell’s EEG device turns brainwaves into sounds, allowing front-line medical professionals, such as nurses and ER doctors, to quickly diagnose seizures and other brain function anomalies. The Grio team designed and built Ceribell’s FDA-approved cloud-based EEG system, the first of its kind. The Ceribell system is now used in clinical settings across the country to detect ongoing seizures, making EEGs more accessible, efficient, and cost-effective. THE CHALLENGE Cloud-based experience needed to mimic systems doctors are already using Diagnostic system needs to be error free, meet FDA approval standards Ceribell needed a fast and reliable system to address the high-stakes nature of the medical conditions in question, and the extremely short response times required to assure positive outcomes for patients. The system was built in order to meet the rigorous reliability and security requirements of FDA approval. To gain widespread adoption, the new cloud-based system had to replicate features of the existing PC-based systems clinicians were already familiar with, while also offering all the advantages of the Cloud. OUR APPROACH Create an intuitive web-based tool that mimics traditional EEG Tackle the most difficult parts of the project first Close collaboration with the client and clinicians Grio designed and built an intuitive web based tool for doctors and nurses to monitor, review, and report on the brain activity that was being captured by Ceribell’s EEG device. To keep the tool intuitive for medical professionals, the UI mimics the output of a traditional EEG machine. On the development side, we strategically tackled the most challenging tasks first, such as parsing, caching, and securing the data in the cloud, and visualizing the EEG using browser-based technologies. Close collaboration, feedback from clinicians in the field, and constant iteration allowed us to get the first version of the app up and running quickly. RESULTS With the new system, clinicians are able to visualize multiple data streams concurrently, which has led to improved efficiency in the diagnostic and treatment workflow. Ceribell received FDA approval for their device and Cloud-based IoT platform, completed clinical trials, and is now rolling out their devices to hospitals across the country.