Toyota aimed to improve employee engagement and communication across regions using a more dynamic and centralized platform for their existing mobile app, TWoW! (Toyota Way of Work). 

To achieve this, Lemon Hive partnered with RTS Group to develop an employee engagement app tailored specifically for Toyota.

In this case study, we’re going to walk you through how we’ve taken the challenge and delivered it just as the client desired using a headless composable architecture with Flutter.

Project Overview

Project: TWoW! Talk (Mobile application) development

Client: Toyota

Industry: Automobile

Delivery date: April 2024 

Solution provided: UI/UX design, app development, backend development

Development methodology: Scrumfall

The Challenge

Toyota Culture follows a people-first approach to driving inclusivity. But the TWoW! app was falling short in terms of meeting the purpose of employee engagement.

Here are the challenges they faced:

• The previous app had an outdated design layout, and the data was poorly presented.
• The app struggled to meet modern expectations, offering a less engaging and intuitive interface.
• Page routing/navigation was not user-friendly. Users could easily get lost while exploring the contents.
• To keep employees motivated, Toyota presented users with badges based on their performance throughout the app. However, the badges weren’t specified.
• The admin can only send trigger notifications. On the other hand, users will only get transactional notifications whenever there’s an activity within the app. That causes distraction during work, and users often receive irrelevant notifications.
• Built on a monolithic architecture, the app lacked the adaptability needed to keep pace with Toyota’s growing digital demands.
• As Toyota’s workforce expanded globally, the app’s limitations hindered its ability to foster strong connections and a unified sense of purpose among employees. 
• Missing basic features, such as profile and setting pages. System privacy settings are insufficient.

The solution they’re looking for:

Toyota aimed to create a centralized hub for people to connect and share their interests. All employees should have seamless access to information about their company culture and be able to navigate topics such as company policies, news, and announcements.

Our Solution

To successfully complete the project, we blended Agile and Waterfall methodologies and adapted them into a Scrumfall approach.

Scrumfall, or Water-Scrum-Fall, is a hybrid project management method that blends Waterfall’s planning, budgeting, and documentation with Agile’s sprints and communication practices from the Scrum framework.

We did intensive research on the present design, analyzing user data and experience. Our goal was to change the information flow so the user could reach the desired screen in no more than two taps.

The challenge was to transform the complex user experience into a simpler and understandable version.

To address this challenge, switching to Headless is the best option for Toyota. Previously, the TWoW! app was developed in Meteor CMS, but we’ve migrated to Sanity CMS for maximum backend flexibility.

Here's how we solved the challenges:

Enhance security

• We’ve implemented password-less login authentication to eliminate attack vectors like brute forcing or password reuse.
• Users can delete their own posts or comments.
• The admin can also delete any user’s post or comment from the admin panel (backend) to control the sharing of sensitive information.

Smart navigation

Users can now return to the main page right from the menu bar.

Updated badges

• Present badges according to usage with unique badge names and instructions for achieving them. Admin can also manually give badges to users from the admin panel/backend.
• We created a leaderboard where everyone can see who has more badges to promote cultural collaboration.

Improved social media feed

• To streamline information accessibility, we’ve developed a personalized newsfeed like social media platforms. Users can create a post from their profile, see other’s posts, like, comment, and share posts on their newsfeed. They can also delete their own posts and comments when necessary. 
• Users can share text-based posts, images (JPEG format), and videos (MP4 format).
• While posting, users can choose a criteria or topic (Post Theme) to define their post. This allows others to understand the motive of a post.

Notification control

• We have improved the notification system by adding a bulk notification/push notification feature. Now, the admin can send custom notifications to a specific region, group of people, or user from the admin panel (backend).
• From the app, users can now see notifications only relevant to their region group or activity. Admins can also manually control notifications from the backend.

Better content management

• Migrating from Meteor CMS to Sanity CMS for greater backend flexibility.
• Allowing admins to easily create, update, and manage content in real-time.
• Introducing personalised newsfeeds for users to share posts, images, and videos.
• Enabling users to delete their own posts and comments, and allowing admins to manage or delete any content.
• Implementing content tagging and post themes to better organize and classify posts.
• Adding a system for reporting inappropriate content to maintain community standards.

Better engagement

To improve engagement, we’ve added quizzes, surveys, and polls so that users can actively participate in important discussions and decisions.

Community standard

• To ensure community standards, users can report a post if it doesn’t follow the community or corporate guidelines.
• Admin gets a notification and can delete the flagged post whenever they want.

The Impact

The app rebuild met all of the users’ expectations. What's more important to us is that it’s widely used within Toyota. The app precisely maps the company’s internal culture. From now on, admins can make inquiries using the polling system we implemented. They can also send personalized push notifications with smart filtration options to a specific region and/or group.

Using headless technology, this simplified solution meets all of Toyota’s existing problems and establishes a strong connection among employees via the TWoW! mobile application.