Case Study - My RCSI Royal College of Surgeons Ireland

Project Details

Background

The Royal College of Surgeons (RCSI) in Ireland required a mobile application and backend console to manage the mobile application. In addition, a web browser version of the app was also required.

The mobile application was required to run natively on Android and iOS with a common user experience on both platforms. The mobile application was to provide useful content for Students and Guests (and eventually other personae). The content was to be organised by category and would comprise links to websites and rich text / html content curated by RCSI Content Editors.

The management console would be a simple web-based content management system to allow Content Editors to create, edit and publish content and content categories, to specify the duration of this content and specify the Personae and Countries to which this content applies.

A responsive web browser version of the App was also required to enable users to access it from desktop or mobile devices.

The design was to implement a clean and simple user experience that was consistent with the RCSI style and branding guidelines.

Challenge

Our Design, Build & Manage strategy was implemented at each stage of the project development. In this case, specific guidelines in line with the current RCSI style and branding guidelines was a priority alongside a clean and simple design. This would ensure easy navigation for students using the app. 

There were four main components in the project: 

  1. Web-based content editor – provides authorized users access to the content to edit and publish updates
  2. Web API – provides an interface to manipulate all the content in the system from the web browser or read it from the mobile application.
  3. Web site – provides browser-based view of the content and categories for students and other personae.
  4. Mobile application – consumer application that reads content from the API.

Outcome

A fully functioning cross platform mobile application based on the Xamarin framework  was proposed for the mobile application. Xamarin Forms was chosen as the framework as it allowed the same design to be used to target both the iOS and Android platforms and had a high degree of reuse. The mobile application would synchronise data from a bespoke web-based content management system. This system facilitated the editing and publication of content, allowing any updates to be category, duration and location specific. Authentication and authorization of users on the system was enabled through integration with Azure Active Directory enabling a SSO solution that fit well with RCSI’s infrastructure policy.

Technology Used

Client Testimonial