(Disclaimer: This is an independent project that Dark Ice undertook and is in no way endorsed or approved by Lite n’ Easy. This is purely a demonstration of our own ability to build an app against an existing system as part of a challenge having reviewed the product produced by Lite n’ Easy. Dark Ice does not currently engage with Lite n’ Easy.)

A new year has rolled around, we say goodbye to 2020 (finally) and hello 2021.  Being in the IT industry it is definitely easy to let your health suffer with bad eating habits, too much time in the chair and excuses about insufficient time in the day to exercise.  It’s why here at Dark Ice we love using our next-door neighbour, Lite n’ Easy.

Who is Lite n’ Easy

Established in Australia, Lite n’ Easy delivers great tasting, healthy food that makes it easy to lose weight and manage your weight. It’s also a convenient solution for time poor people who are too busy to shop for or cook every meal every day.

Current Lite n’ Easy App

With our expertise in mobile development, we were very excited to see that Lite n’ Easy had released a mobile app just in time for the New Year rush.  We all checked out the reviews and were a bit heartbroken to see that it was not doing as well as their delicious meals were.  We downloaded the app and had a play around to see if some of these issues could be remedied with the Dark Ice treatment.

The Challenge

I had a couple of days free over the Christmas / New Year break so the team challenged me to see what I could do in less than one week (admittedly being able to rely on our existing wealth of code and tools, but putting that to the side). The major goal was to solve the need for multiple logins during the use of the app as well as when the app is reopened. This was the cause of around 85% of the negative reviews and would easily allow the app to have an overall star rating of 4+. The best solution for this was to implement an optional pin and biometric system.

The Solution

I can proudly share that in just three days, I not only beat the deadline but also implemented:

Extra Feature: Notifications

We can now sign in and access all of what Lite n’ Easy has to offer with a pin, fingerprint or face.  I decided to omit recreating the weight tracker as Dark Ice has already dived into that area of app development with our very successful app Pocket Cal/kJ.  I did however have a few hours left on my challenge and decided something that the app was really missing was notifications.  Lite n’ Easy give some very good deals through emails, however we all know that the inbox can get filled with spam and often ‘mark all as read’ is easier than looking through them all.  However, with this new change, it’s now possible to receive updates on delivery timelines as well as special offers through a simple notification.

Where to from here

And that concludes the challenge! With some more time I’d love to implement some more Dark Ice flavouring with a full native ordering system instead of going through the mobile website in addition to a checklist / meal planner which can be used to track your energy intake and give suitable exercises to achieve a desired weight goal.  Although as the app stands right now, we are able to do a full order through Lite n’ Easy with one simple login using a fingerprint.

A full demo can be found below, along with a download for android in the description: