Shifting our focus from web development to app development

We at BizReach operate multiple products, including our namesake job-switching website designed to connect companies and human resources who can serve as an immediate asset. Given that most of our products originated as web services, we had been unable to devote ourselves to native smartphone apps. We did offer apps, but they were more of an on-the-side project done by our web developers. Not enough time was put into maintaining and operating the apps.

But even services used for limited periods of time—while people search for jobs, for instance—have seen a rise in smartphone-based users. In light of this trend, we started prioritizing smartphones in 2019 and have so far revamped our BizReach, Careertrek, and BizReach Campus Android apps. These were redesigned at different times, so currently each of them is in a different phase. Of the three, this article shares about our BizReach Campus and BizReach apps.

The BizReach Campus app revamped in May

Let’s start with BizReach Campus, redesigned in May 2021. This is an Android app tailored to university students, providing them a network service to consult with alumni. Though originally developed as a React Native app in both iOS and Android, there were potential roadblocks to continuous quality improvement when it came to our long-term business expansion. This inspired us to rewrite the app in Swift and Kotlin because, as mentioned earlier, we were focusing on pure native apps as part of our smartphone-first initiative.

We had largely two design concepts for the revamp: one was to avoid handling the Android app development process on a personal basis, and the other was to allow for smooth transition into Jetpack Compose down the road.

The BizReach Campus team’s policy is to minimize specialized engineers who only deal with specific platforms. As such, the team wanted to align the iOS and Android architecture as much as possible to reduce the mental switching cost for the implementation of each platform. The iOS app, which had its revamp completed earlier, uses The Composable Architecture (TCA). After considering how to implement our Android app in a way similar to TCA, we chose the Orbit library and ended up with an MVI architecture.

Given that we used SwiftUI—a declarative UI—to develop the iOS app, we wanted to develop our Android app with another declarative UI Jetpack Compose too, which was likely to become mainstream going forward. But Jetpack Compose had not been formally launched yet when we were working on the revamp, so after factoring in risks and other aspects, we decided not to use it. We were careful not to write logic on the View-side for future migrations, though this is not a practice exclusive to MVI architecture.

Flowchart of the BizReach Campus Android app

Deciding how to handle WebView was especially difficult. An ideal solution was to implement all screens with native code, but our time was limited. The implementation for the app’s first release was done at a minimum necessary level, with some parts compensated with WebView. For transitions, we used Jetpack’s Navigation component. There’s been a lot of struggle in arranging an implementation that seamlessly integrates native and WebView codes, while factoring in state management and deep links. But the effort paid off: the implementation offers a very easy native code replacement process, compared with the complex WebView that was introduced back in the React Native days.

Being able to borrow the web screen resulted in man-hour and scope adjustments, enabling us to launch the app roughly on schedule. No major bugs occurred after the launch either. In my experience, this was the most smooth-sailing revamp process ever.

The growing BizReach app

Our second example is the BizReach Android app designed for job-hunters, which we revamped in January 2020. Given that more than a year and a half has passed since the redesigning, this section will share about the app’s post-revamp growth and the structure supporting that growth.

Launching a service isn’t the end of the journey—in fact, the real effort begins after the launch. To make a service grow, we obviously need to achieve development while facilitating a rapid improvement cycle. As such, we defined key indices that the app as a service should pursue and, to boost the indices, we arranged so that a single team can consistently cover planning to development phases.

We run A/B tests using a feature of Firebase to measure the effect of the actual release. By releasing some newly added features to a limited audience, we compare how the features affected the key indices and changed user behavior. Using this approach, only features that brought positive impact were officially incorporated in the app, which in turn enabled us to keep making effective improvements. Here’s an example of a feature we adopted:

Example of A/B test

To swiftly release conceived projects, we also organized an app team that includes PMs and designers and arranged so that the team can cover the API development process as much as possible. This facilitates cross-functional communication, allowing for the team to coordinate by incorporating the engineer’s opinion from the planning phase or dealing with detailed specification alignment issues that arise during development. Android app development members have an opportunity to discuss typical issues that arise in their jobs and ideas for improvement. The latter part of this discussion is saved for chitchat, with members catching up with each other in a relaxed mood.

The structure of the team has been through minor changes—for instance, the team grew smaller during the BizReach app’s growth due to a revamp project of another app. Regardless, we succeeded in improving ratings from around 3 shortly after the upgrade to the current 4.3.

Issues and future outlook

So far, this article has shared primarily about positive aspects. But in reality, various issues still remain. Problems may manifest in the BizReach Campus app too, but at any rate, we plan to switch to native view for currently WebView-implemented screens. Also, during the BizReach app revamp we set short-term goals for development, but new issues will likely arise as we set our sights on mid- to long-term growth.

Problems occur in each app, but many of the methods for solving them and the experience from revamping tend to remain as a personal insight of developers. As such, my personal hope is to build a framework that strengthens cross-app and horizontal ties among developers and thereby translates developers’ insight into explicit knowledge for the entire company.

In conclusion

This article shared about development efforts concerning two of our apps, and hopefully gave readers an idea of how we develop and operate Android apps. We invite you to read our Visional Engineering Blog, which features an article about an Android app redesigning we did for our Careertrek job-switching website, designed for ambitious people in their 20s.

There’s an array of ideas we want to actualize and issues we must solve, which is why we need more people to create our products together. We’re seeking Android engineers, too. If you’re interested, please apply from the job opening page below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Career opportunities and our tech blog

• Visional Engineering Blog
• Our goal to keep supporting ambitious people in their 20s: The road to revamping the Careertrek app
• Android engineer job opening

About the author

Junya Shirahama

Junya Shirahama joined BizReach, Inc. immediately after graduating from the Department of Molecular and Material Sciences of Kyushu University’s Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences. He was responsible for the server-side of BizReach—a job-switching website connecting companies and human resources who can serve as an immediate asset— and won a company-wide new employee award for his devotion to service quality improvement. He switched to Android development in March 2020 and worked on BizReach and the alumni network service BizReach Campus. Now he is a manager of the BizReach app development team.

About Visional

With its group mission of “Persistent Creation of New Possibilities,” Visional runs various businesses that promote digital transformation of industry with a special focus on human resources (HR) technology. The firm aims to create a Human Capital Management ecosystem centered around recruitment platforms including BizReach and the HRMOS platform designed for utilizing human resources. Visional has also launched a string of new businesses in such sectors as business succession M&A, logistics tech, cybersecurity, and sales tech.

• https://www.visional.inc/ja/index.html