Zaiko
A year-long collaboration with the fast-growing Tokyo event solutions startup during which Tacchi produced multiple web and mobile products.
Available on
Assisting with rapid growth
We had worked with the founders of Zaiko a few years before its inception when they were still running iFlyer.tv. We knew they were a fantastic group of people to work with, so when Zaiko started to grow rapidly and they got in touch to ask if we'd like to come on board and work closely with their in-house team on a variety of consumer and B2B products, we jumped at the chance.
Over the course of a year we used the full range of our user research, design, and engineering skills as we worked on a native mobile video streaming application, a web and mobile event discovery interface, a mobile ticket scanning and check-in tool, microsites for music festivals, the Japanese localization of a US-based service, an NFT marketplace, and more!
Zaiko iOS and Android app
Our initial task was to head up the production of the first release of Zaiko's official iOS and Android application.
The core functionality for the initial version was to provide access for smartphone users to the fledgling Zaiko Encore on-demand video service, which had been released on the web by their in-house team a couple of months prior.
Due to the established nature of the app's feature set, there was no requirement for us to provide strategic design help at this time, so were able to jump straight into the UI/UX design process. Our engineering team were also able to start building the technical foundations of the app in parallel with the design process, enabling us to get the product to market more quickly, in addition to enabling us to iteratively improve the design in code as the development progressed.
Design
A port with enhancements of the existing web application to native mobile user experience, including ensuring refined experience on tablet devices as well as smartphones.
Engineering
Due to the cross-platform requirements, we elected to use React Native for the app. This enabled us to build for both iOS and Android with maximum efficiency, and cost-effective maintainability in the long term. To further enhance our productivity, we elected to use Expo, a powerful framework and platform for developing React Native applications.
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![play]()
Video streaming from Zaiko's content servers with anti-piracy authentication.
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![casting]()
Google Cast support enabling users to stream content to their TV, in addition to native Airplay support.
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![graphql]()
GraphQL, a modern and flexible method of transferring data from web services to mobile and web applications.
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![subscription]()
App Store (iOS) and Play Store (Android) subscription payments for the Zaiko Premium service.
zaiko.io event and ticket discovery
After releasing the initial version of the Zaiko native app, we had become more familiar with Zaiko's product offering, customer base, and technology stack, so Zaiko asked us to work on a bigger project: help to sell more event tickets by redesigning the consumer event discovery interface for the zaiko.io website, and also bring the functionality to the iOS and Android apps we'd just released.
Design
This project allowed us to use our full range of strategic design, research, and UX/UI design skills, including:
User research
Product roadmap creation
User flow and UI design
Usability and desirability testing
Key technologies
GraphQL API engineering for the PHP-based web service (Laravel and Lighthouse)
A new web application using React Native Web
Additional features for the React Native mobile application
Other projects
In addition to the above, our team members supported Zaiko's other business needs in a variety of ways.
Ticketgate
An iOS and Android app for event organizers to use when admitting attendees. It allowed for camera-based scanning of QR codes to consume tickets, or manual lookup of attendee details and tapping a button to "check them in".
Festival microsites
Zaiko was involved in bringing international music festivals to the Japanese audience with their streaming technology. Part of this required localized marketing websites to be created, which we were happy to assist with.
OneFan, an NFT marketplace for artists and their fans
Tacchi supported the development of OneFan by providing the UI design, handing over to their in-house team for engineering.
Japanese-localized site for US-based streaming service
Zaiko had built a relationship to bring content from a leading US-based event production and streaming service to Japan, and asked us to help them create a local website to market the service. Unfortunately we're restricted in the details we can share, but we enjoyed working with them on the web design and Wordpress engineering.
