The xplore suite of apps began life as Pixie, an app to connect independent businesses with customers. Businesses signed up to the app and created a profile, which was made available to discover and search for within the app. Businesses could also payments via a pre-payment Pixie Card - customers using this card accumulated loyalty points, which could then be spent at any participating business.

I was initially commissioned to upgrade the ageing React Native codebase to modern standards, including upgrading all dependencies to the latest versions, and migrating older class-based components to hooks. An incremental adoption of TypeScript was also employed, which uncovered a fixed a number of issue with prop-type mismatches.

Following this initial period, I continued to work on the following features:

• Allowing the Pixie Card to be added to the Apple Wallet on iOS
• Supporting the rebrand from Pixie to xplore
• Building a new Discover tab, which allows local businesses to be discovered on an interactive map or in a tiled list
• Improving the Search feature to return more relevant results

The xplore app continues to be available on both the iOS and Android app stores, and is expanding to include more locations within the UK.