Proximus Pickx

To design and develop the Pickx app, Proximus was looking for a new partner. Since the integration of the app requires specific skills and a lot of expertise, this was not an easy task.

Proximus has a strong in-house development team that creates cross-platform components to communicate with its entertainment backends. They found a match in icapps, thanks to our knowledge and expertise on both entertainment app development and backend integration. This was the beginning of an interesting collaboration with a team consisting of developers and designers of Proximus and icapps. At the Proximus offices, soon the team was known as ‘Proxicapps’.

The project had already been kicked off by the former development partner of Proximus. In order to insure the quality, it was necessary to start with a profound assessment of the existing code.

Backend development is done in-house by Proximus. For the UX/UI design and integration of the mobile applications for both iOS and Android, our icapps team worked closely together with the Proximus team.

In our design process, we focused on aligning the designs with those of the other Proximus Pickx platforms, being TV and web, to ensure a uniform user experience. This was challenging, since every platform is used in a different way, with a different purpose. On mobile devices, for example, viewers will use the app to follow up on new content, to quickly record a program while on the go, and to play short videos. On the big screen, the app is mostly used to watch a movie while relaxing at home Frequent user testing was necessary to find the ideal marriage between platform-specific user experience and uniformity of all contexts.

The close collaboration within the team was an important factor in succeeding. On top of the biweekly demos, alignment meetings were organized. During these meetings, all designs for web, mobile and TV were compared to enable immediate adjustment of potential deviations.

The entire ecosystem we created together with Proximus consists of three separate technologies. This is where we could offer Proximus an extra advantage: our product teams, fixed teams with both developers and designers that work on specific products only. After icapps merged into multidisciplinary teams one year ago, Proximus could count on a mature team, existing of team members with their own specific strengths.

“The formation of Proxicapps, a team consisting of employees of both Proximus and icapps, saved us a lot of time and effort. This allowed us to get great results in a short amount of time,” Niko Ampoorter, Domain Manager at Proximus, explains.

“And more so,” adds Lars Van Huyck, Product Manager at Proximus, “the team was not afraid of working around the clock to meet important deadlines.”

After successfully launching the Proximus Pickx app, the next step was to develop this app for Apple TV. You might see this as a big challenge, but it was one we were happy to meet. Because of the close collaboration with the Proximus team, we were excited to develop this brand new Apple TV app.

Since Apple TV is a very specific platform to build an app for, we, the Proxicapps team, were looking forward to an exciting project. We chose to work with the standard framework of Apple TV apps, to avoid unnecessary complexity during the development. As a result, the project went smoothly and there were no major obstacles along the way.

But, we couldn’t let this one pass without a little extra fun. Kevin, Product Owner of the Proximus Pickx Apple TV project, made the promise to get an Apple haircut once the app was successfully launched. Why? Well, in his words “All the guys in the team are younger than me, and I just wanted to do something cool”. This little dare ensured some laughter and set an extra goal during the development process. And yes, we have evidence that both our Apple TV app and Kevin’s Apple haircut are launched successfully.

Our successful collaboration will continue with developing the Pickx app into an extensive entertainment platform, on which every user will be able to find and consume their favorite content. On each device, anywhere, anytime.