Telegraph Offline Digital Guide to Travel

The client

The Telegraph Media Group Limited is a multimedia news brand and the proprietor of a number of well-known British newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph.

As a subsidiary of Press Holdings, the Telegraph Media Group publishes daily and weekly publications in print and online, providing news on politics, obituaries, sports, finance, lifestyle, travel, health, culture, technology, fashion, and automobiles.

Our brief 

The Telegraph Media Group wanted to further serve its wide readership by building an app that offered exclusive Telegraph holiday guides via iOS devices while also monetising its backlog of existing travel-themed digital guide content. 

With this in mind, we were asked to provide an in-depth mobile and backend development solution for a digital guide with all UX and design capabilities created in-house.

We wanted to create an app that could be used as a digital travel guide, with content curated from the Telegraph’s award-winning website.

What we delivered

As an R&D project offering, our scope included strategy, design, development, quality assurance, maintenance, and support services. 

We used Agile delivery methods to focus on the priority features and updates for users and the business. 

We planned and scoped out the features of the digital guide and conducted the initial design for the app in collaboration with a Product Manager from Telegraph Media. We also conducted workshops with key stakeholders within the business, such as content creators, editors, and designers. As a result, The Telegraph was always engaged with our production team and could provide detailed feedback throughout the development process. 

With a turnaround for the digital travel guide of only eight weeks, we designed a technical solution that could support a number of downloads and complex data structures over mobile networks. 

As well as offering digital travel guides, the app also includes recommended itineraries, city guides, easy-to-use interactive maps, and key information such as phone numbers, prices, websites and booking advice – all at the user’s fingertips.

We maintained a close collaboration with all third parties throughout the project lifecycle, especially during the planning phases, to ensure alignment before the development commenced.

Working alongside the Telegraph Media Group UX and design team, we collaborated on their tight design and layout specifications to deliver a truly responsive final product.

Our team has worked hard to understand the needs of media companies, journalistic ventures, and consumers in the travel industry. We’ve run research projects to understand customer behaviour and needs, resulting in a strategic vision and product roadmap. 

Support

We had a maintenance and reporting contract in place since our first undertaking in 2017, which included regular reporting on the performance of the apps, all integrations and SDKs. Regular reporting allowed us to flag potential updates well before they became critical and ensure they were planned and delivered in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.

The maintenance contract included SLAs covering response times and target service restoration. These are covered by service credits, should we not respond or deliver to expectation, and have never been enacted.

Optimised budgets

To ensure well-defined and well-planned work, we use our standard process of Discover, Define and Deliver. This allows budgets to be planned and approved based on known deliverables.

We work on Time & Materials, with regular open reporting on past and forecast burn. This ensures resources are directed cost-effectively. Running projects using agile scrum boards ensures developers always have access to tasks. Telegraph Media can, therefore, easily view what’s planned in each sprint through their daily and weekly involvement in sprint ceremonies.   

Major feature releases during our contract have included:

• 4-star reviews on the iOS app store
• 100k: downloads across iOS devices to date