Developing an MVP for the React Native River Navigation App

Challenge

The main challenge for us was the fact that Google maps service can’t find a route when users are on rivers, as it only works with roads. This is where we had to work to find another solution.

The only data we could rely on were positions of river locks, and average travel time from one to the other. So, we decided to use this time and calculate the current kayak position using the Pythagorean theorem. Sounds easy, but it wasn’t really like that ?

Development

To make a long story short, we’ll say that we divided the development process into three phases.

Phase 1: MVP. This first version of the app didn’t contain much. We’d made a loading screen, a home page with a map that didn’t contain directions, main menu, a ‘Lock details’ screen, and a tutorial with a video that can be played even if there’s no Internet connection.

Phase 2: News management and alerts. Throughout this phase, we added some alert messages, an ‘Information’ screen, and an ‘Alerts and news details’ screen.

Phase 3: Route management. This phase was complex and really time-consuming because it involved route management logic implementation. While working on this phase we added a kayak current position tracking logic, ‘Route details’ screen, ‘Add route’ screen, and updated the Home page with a map that also contained the route.