How we built a flexible, scalable and user-focused product for Airspace Data

Airspace Data: Delivering a Properly Calibrated MVP | Foxbox Digital

United States airspace spans a staggering 

 square miles. Of that amount, approximately ¼ is reserved for use by the military for training and testing of aircraft, new technologies, and advanced weapons.

Who occupies that space at any given moment is the result of close communication between the FAA, airline dispatchers and the US Department of Defense. With 45,000 commercial and civilian flights traveling through US airspace every day, even the most seemingly incremental improvements to this process can create a profound positive domino effect.

Airspace Data is a technology company aiming to do exactly that.

The short of it: Airspace reserved for the military is often unoccupied. But without a real time view of that valuable airspace, the FAA, the airlines, and private pilots can’t utilize it.  Similarly, the military increasingly needs access to civilian airspace, and needs a better way to make those requests.

By equipping military-range operators, the FAA and airline dispatchers with the precise, timely data indicating the availability of military-controlled airspace, 

Airspace Data helps airlines plan routes more efficiently

 - leading to lower carbon emissions, faster flights, reduced fuel costs, and the type of dynamic transparency that elevates the aviation industry as a whole.

The military sees reduced manual workload in its communications with FAA, and enhanced mission readiness for key training and test objectives.

Having gained early traction with major US airlines, a web-based MVP became the critical missing piece Airspace Data leadership needed. They looked to Foxbox to get it off the ground.

Building our solution with the military, FAA, and the airlines happens in scarce,  high-stakes meetings. I can’t bluff my way through it, the product has to work. So what Foxbox did is really important because it does. It works.

Understanding, contextualizing and interrogating the problem was top priority.

Through a combination of collaborative workshops, user interviews, and design exploratories, our team gathered the pieces necessary to bring the puzzle into focus. While the client’s existing proof of concept and strategic vision helped us ask the right questions, we sought a first-hand perspective to find the right answers.

Alongside Airspace leadership, members of our UX and Product Strategy team visited with all stakeholders to deepen our contextual understanding and help inform upcoming interviews with airline dispatchers. One such interview revealed a pivotal flaw in our underlying assumptions.

“Having access to this type of data would be a game-changer,” one dispatcher said, “but not for my role.”


At their particular airline, the dispatcher explained, the 

would glean much more direct value from the tool.


While just one step upstream in the flight planning process, reframing the product strategy to serve both navigation analysts and airline dispatchers became critical to ensure we built the right thing the right way.

Without that understanding of who's really going to use it, we would have completely missed the mark.

We built a detailed product roadmap, outlining how to serve both navigation analysts and dispatchers, as primary and secondary users respectively. Our team of Product Specialists and UX / UI designers then began to bring product concepts to life. Early low fidelity design mockups allowed us to elicit feedback from both Airspace Data leadership as well as the airline stakeholders we had now more precisely defined.

Because no two airlines operate the same way, and no two navigation analysts / dispatchers within those airlines focus on the same regions of airspace, a rapidly iterative design process helped us bring a methodical approach to the product’s central challenge: The user experience needed to be 

robust enough to manage the totality of relevant US airspace data, yet simple enough to fit seamlessly into existing route planning workflows.

Recognizing that our solution would introduce an additional step, pinpointing the role of user notifications became central to our ability to craft a seamless and impactful user experience. 

With an emphasis on simplicity and precise communication, the Airspace Data interface minimizes cognitive load, while maximizing the type of context-dependent, time-sensitive information users require. Optimizing for simplicity also meant deliberately avoiding a map-centric format, in favor of a focused interaction model that mirrors the needs, preferences and priorities of both primary and secondary users.

 Working in close collaboration with Airspace Data’s technical leaders, we moved high-fidelity designs into production.

For our team of front end developers, engineers and QA specialists, success depended on a combination of continuous end-to-end testing, automated deployments and an ability to navigate the industry’s unique complexities and existing data infrastructure.

Airspace Data 1.0 was released to both commercial airlines and cargo carriers in December 2023. Version 2.0 was completed with the help of ongoing Foxbox development support in April of 2024, and is already being received very positively by major US Airlines.      

 For airlines engaging in city pair trials, the financial and environmental impact of the product is already on full display. The company and its airline partners have completed more than 2,700 flights, saving 2 million pounds of CO2 emissions, 60,000 flight miles, and 100,000 gallons of fuel.


With a product properly rooted in the end user’s perspective, Airspace Data Leadership is now better equipped than ever before to focus on building new customer relationships, expanding  to new users, and evolving revenue models to best position the company for long-term success.

Foxbox was crucial to our ability to stay agile

Airspace Data VP of Engineering George Song

Foxbox built the Airspace Data web application with the following technologies:

Airspace Data: Delivering a Properly Calibrated MVP

In the data & analytics world, it means accessing vast data systems through a single, streamlined user experience. The “single pane of glass” is an elusive holy grail of insight, efficiency and data-inspired decisions, and one that businesses spend millions to pursue externally or build in-house. 

How We Helped Axis Group | Foxbox Digital

In the data & analytics world, it means accessing vast data systems through a single, streamlined user experience. The “single pane of glass” is an elusive holy grail of insight, efficiency and data-inspired decisions, and one that businesses spend millions to pursue externally or build in-house.

Atlanta-based data & analytics consultancy 

 saw an opportunity to help its clients unlock the value of an organization-wide decision making tool in a different way: by building it for them.

Customer demand for HELIX was high, and early user feedback necessitated stable continuous improvement. But as demand began to outpace their ability to improve stability, add new features, and scale the core technology, delivering customers the right product meant enlisting the right help.

We were so focused on maintaining the product that building and deploying new features was a big challenge.


Jerry DiMaso, Chief Product Offer, Axis Group

The Solution: Think Holistically, Build Quickly

As a primarily services-based consultancy, Axis Group’s investment in HELIX is the company’s first venture into a product-driven offering for clients. So not only did we help accelerate their ability to build, scale and evolve the core platform, but we worked alongside their senior technical leaders to complement their deep industry expertise with a wider, user-driven approach to product-building.

Foxbox looked at the engagement more holistically than most consulting companies. They’ve really taken ownership of what they’re building.


Jerry DiMaso, Chief Product Officer, Axis Group

We started by building foundational processes to help turn client feedback into easily prioritized and actionable product improvements. Getting the right people in the right place meant better Agile ceremonies, smarter bug categorization and efficient ways of working that allow Axis Senior Developers to use their unique industry experience where it’s most valuable.

Through an automated CI/CD pipeline, routine maintenance of the HELIX codebase can now be easily maintained, replacing arduous manual deployment processes with predictability and speed.

Perhaps most significantly, close collaboration with the core Axis engineering team included

Migrating the entire HELIX platform to Kubernetes, unlocking a new world of value in operational efficiency, scalability and multi-cloud security.

Migrating to Kubernetes was a huge endeavor, and would not have been possible without Foxbox.


Jerry DiMaso, Chief Product Offer, The Axis Group 

The Impact: A tool with transformative power

HELIX is the type of game-changing product many Axis customers have tried building themselves for years. Axis is now delivering it to thousands of users every day. And with a 

, HELIX is already proving to be a product worth rallying around.

It’s changing the way everyone is thinking about what we do as a company.


Jerry DiMaso, Chief Product Offer, Axis Group

How We Helped Axis Group Deliver its Clients a Transformative Data & Analytics Product

Prior to being acquired by Versapay, DadeSystems was an early pioneer in large-scale, AI-based payment processing. Due to customer demand, Dade developed a mobile application alongside its renowned desktop platform, allowing delivery drivers and sales people to overcome the hassles of paper check processing with speed and ease. 

Versapay’s Mobile Strategy | Foxbox Digital

, DadeSystems was an early pioneer in large-scale, AI-based payment processing. Due to customer demand, Dade developed a mobile application alongside its renowned desktop platform, allowing delivery drivers and sales people to overcome the hassles of paper check processing with speed and ease.

While the app was well-received and fueled new growth, the Dade team struggled to overcome a critical obstacle: ever-changing iOS requirements and competing priorities were outpacing their ability to keep the app performing at a high level.

The Problem: How to Keep Mobile Moving Forward

While leadership had envisioned keeping development talent in-house, industry-standard struggles with developer turnover and talent retention pushed development of their mobile app further behind the standard of service their customers had come to expect.

The overall app experience began to feel stale and outdated. Error-prone updates and a lack of automated testing only further magnified the pitfalls of releasing manually.

With most of their development talent specializing in Ruby on Rails, investing in a top-notch mobile customer experience meant enlisting world-class React Native developers.

“It started as a rescue operation,” recalls DadeSystems VP of Engineering Doug Hathaway.

Engaged to lead Versapay’s mobile engineering effort, progress was strong and steady.

Foxbox absolutely chewed up our backlog. They worked like surgeons.

 
Doug Hathaway, VP of Engineering, Versapay

Leveraging Foxbox Digital’s deep React Native experience, not only was tech debt quickly paid down and their library updated, but fixes to the mobile app’s foundation meant that future maintenance could be done proactively, ensuring that evolutions in operating systems wouldn’t cause Versapay to fall behind again.

Our implementation of a new CI/CD pipeline transformed how we brought the Versapay, Cash Application to market. It’s fast, reliable, and automated with the push of a button.

Through the integration of Sauce Labs, Semaphore CI, and our own development magic, we delivered Versapay the value of automated mobile end-to-end testing without burning substantial additional resources and time.


Every time we build a feature, every pull request, every commit is automatically tested on real devices to make sure it’s working as expected. 


Katharine Padilla, Sr. Mobile Engineer, Foxbox

Having initially resisted the idea of enlisting outside development help, our close partnership with Versapay has transformed how they serve their customers.

Prior to engaging Foxbox, they released updates to the mobile app every two months. Now they’re released every two weeks. The release process itself, previously a 3-5 hour manual process, is also now down to just 30 minutes, adding valuable predictability to daily operations.

Their new carefully documented build process, automated testing system, and ability to adapt quickly now means a new custom build request from a client no longer travels along the hazardous road of human error it once did.

Reduced errors have dramatically improved customer satisfaction, to the tune of a 99.32% success rate. And perhaps most importantly, stability has never been stronger. Versapay’s automated test suite means releases are pushed with full confidence that existing functionality will be unaffected.

When I’m working with Versapay, I don’t feel like a contractor. It feels like I’m part of their team.

 
Anastasiia Kraineva, Senior Agile Delivery Consultant, Foxbox 

A relationship built on proactive maintenance means always looking ahead. Which is why, as Versapay’s mobile engineering partner, we’re also migrating the entire code base to TypeScript.

So whoever is at the helm of the mobile app in the future, the code is safer, cleaner, and easier to read than ever before.

Refactoring to a statically-typed safe language during both development and testing means reliability is constantly improving and errors are kept to a minimum.


Through the acquisition of DadeSystems by Versapay, our partnership continues to be one built  on trust, predictability, and the peace of mind of knowing a critical piece of your business is always in good hands.


They’ve required zero hand holding from day one. It feels like a true partnership.


Doug Hathaway, VP of Engineering, Versapay

 Webdriver.io, Appium, Saucelabs, JavaScript

Looking to transform how you serve your customers?

How We Put Stability, Predictability & Speed at the Heart of Versapay’s Mobile Strategy 

OrangeQC is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. 

Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

How Foxbox Modernized OrangeQC’s Android App in Two Months

 is a leading inspection platform that helps facility teams track and improve cleaning, disinfection, and safety. Organizations like the University of Colorado Boulder, University of Toronto, Johns Hopkins University, and the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky International Airport have relied on it for over a decade.

In simple terms, OrangeQC is a super-powered checklist app that allows facility managers to keep a pulse on their facilities by tracking quality control, compliance, and project completion.

No more paper. No more lost inspections. No more manually entering data into spreadsheets.

It was already an awesome app. So why did OrangeQC need Foxbox?

We Modernized the Android Experience From the Ground Up To Increase Stability, Scalability and Speed of Feature Development

OrangeQC was an iOS-first company, but after many years of success on iOS, they wanted to extend their reach to better support Android users. Users asked for it and OrangeQC delivered.

The trouble is that the Android ecosystem is in constant flux, so the constant changes quickly became burdensome for the company to support—and frustrating for Android users.

While most OrangeQC users depend on the iOS application, roughly 10–20% needed an Android version of the app.

Inconsistency was the primary issue with the current Android app. In other words, the app might work on one Android phone but not another.

It was a problem that needed to be addressed, quickly.

OrangeQC Took a Leap of Faith – And it Paid Off

If an Android app doesn’t work as well as it should, it’s understandable to think that you only need to patch the Android version.

However, our senior engineering team did a deep-dive into fixing the Android app’s core issues, and recommended to re-architect the app from the ground up. Complete rewrites are usually to be avoided, but with the everchanging Android landscape, it was necessary to get on a solid foundation for continued growth.  OrangeQC’s options were clear: patch the existing Android app for a short time, or fix it forever with a modern architecture. They put their faith in us and chose the latter.


A Modern React Native Platform that supports Android users.

Foxbox helps us differentiate ourselves in a traditionally paper-based industry. They helped us bring a modern approach to our application and deliver value to our users

The OrangeQC Android app is more stable than it’s ever been, and it opened up new feature development opportunities that were not available before our rebuild.

A flawless launch so great, nobody noticed.

We smiled at the opportunity to transform an app for what OrangeQC Founder Matt Gornick calls a traditionally paper-based industry into something that’s, well, tech-savvy , sleek, user-friendly, and, pardon the pun, clean.

Since this is a platform that’s been used by organizations for over a decade, we needed to rebuild and relaunch without impacting current users.

We rebuilt the app in parallel with the existing one, allowing users to continue using the old version and slowly migrate to the modern application, before finally  ending support for the old version.

A big component of the launch is that the new version didn’t impact production users and the data that was stored on their phones from the previous version. We allowed users to upgrade to the modern app at their convenience.

Since many activities are performed offline, losing this data or forcing the user to upgrade was not an option.

We prioritized the user experience from the beginning, so launching the new version without the user losing their data that was stored on their phones was important, but also a big technical challenge.

The app is faster. More reliable. And most importantly, it’s a better experience for everyone. Period.

So that’s what we did: from proof of concept, to working MVP, to production app—in only two months. Over the subsequent months, we iteratively worked with OrangeQC to roll out further offline support and new functionality to bring it to parity with the classic application.

Modern Application, Fewer Bugs & Happier Customers

I originally envisioned Foxbox as the ‘Android team,’ but they quickly filled other development needs on web and iOS. I’ve never seen a software firm ramp up as fast as they did, and keep quality top of mind.

Now that the new Android app is launched, we're poised to continue development bringing it closer to the iOS application’s feature set. Impressed by the success of the Android project, OrangeQC enlisted us to improve their web application and iOS app.

More opportunities for bigger and better feature development.

The one thing that modernizing the Android app did for OrangeQC is that it allows the engineering team to move faster, and to build modern experiences without worrying about breaking the app as the Android ecosystem changes.

On the web application, we started by adding one of the most highly-requested user features: a Template Library incorporating industry best practices directly from within the software. Now OrangeQC users not only benefit from a world-class application, but can rest assured that they are also leveraging industry best practices.

On the iOS application, we undertook a modernization of the codebase to bring it up to date with the latest standards.

The end result? Polished, robust software that works across three unique platforms: iOS, Android, and the web.

We’re working to roll out new features soon, so stay tuned, Android users. You won’t be disappointed.

Foxbox came through. They did everything faster than I expected, and they delivered. I couldn’t ask for a better team than Foxbox. I’m excited to continue growing with Foxbox.

StormWind is an IT training company that offers live and on-demand e-learning experiences that are personal, interactive, and engaging.

Since 2009, the family-run company has partnered with a range of Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, United, AT&T, Cisco, Honda, Nestle, NASA, and more.

How We Helped Stormwind Launch a Customized, Automated E-Learning Platform

 is an IT training company that offers live and on-demand e-learning experiences that are personal, interactive, and engaging.

Since 2009, the family-run company has partnered with a range of Fortune 500 companies, including Disney, United, AT&T, Cisco, Honda, Nestle, NASA, and more.

With unlimited live classes, an elite faculty, and more than 170 program offerings in AI, automation, cybersecurity, end-user training, and more, StormWind remains a standout name in the remote-learning industry.

StormWind worked with a previous developer that consistently missed deadlines, didn’t deliver what was promised, and wasted over a year and a half with nothing to show for it.

Foxbox Digital took over, immediately stabilized development, and transformed how StormWind brought its product to market.

Here’s how we helped them take their training to the next level.

We created a personalized experience to make the student feel at home.

StormWind’s goal is to make education as great an experience as possible.

And to do that, the experience needed to be simple and personalized.

We optimized this experience by personalizing it to the student’s needs while significantly improving the course filters and navigation.

When users arrive at StormWind, they land on the My Classroom page first. It’s where they browse courses and filter them by title, topic, job role, difficulty, and instructor.

Students can now select what courses they want to take, and the StormWind platform will create a personalized classroom experience for them.

We made it easier to manage student enrollment.

StormWind’s internal team had to complete a tedious, ten-step process and navigate a series of pages just to create a single user account.

In short: It was a time-consuming, inefficient process—and a royal pain in the neck.

We like simple, so we decided to automate the enrollment process through an account creation wizard.

With our account creation wizard in place, StormWind team members now create accounts and groups and manage licenses from one place—without jumping back and forth from multiple pages.

We made reporting a powerful, simple, and easy-to-use admin tool.

It was difficult for StormWind to track user registration and membership status, in addition to expiration dates, course demand, and engagement.

Knowing that data is their #1 tool to foster growth, we designed and developed an admin portal where they could easily view the following:

Filter search results for onboarding and expiration details

Review courses in progress by specific users

Examine course activity for students and groups

E-Learning solutions: Powered by top-notch engineering, design, and product teams

“What Foxbox Digital brought to the table, that nobody else has, is their ability to move things forward. They moved through roadblocks and ambiguity and turned that into real software that changed the way we operate. I’m grateful to have them as our digital partner,”  Tom Graunke, Chairman & CEO of StormWind Ventures.

Foxbox clients generally come to us for three reasons:

They’re trying to bring a new product to market, and they need a partner to create the product strategy, design it, and execute it.

They’re building a product, but they want it built faster.

They tried to build something and struggled. So they come to us with a foundation, and we build off of it.

In this case, StormWind needed help taking over from another development firm that couldn’t get it done.

Now, their platform has a streamlined user experience with the ability to gather more data and build and manage user accounts with ease.

Within a few short months of launch, the new platform enrolled 2,300 users and is expected to reach 10,000 users in a few months post-launch. The new platform has already made a significant positive impact resulting in hundreds of thousands in revenue.

X Company needed to bring their large, inspiring vision to life. They thought big, and they needed a partner that was aligned with their holistic vision. Read how Foxbox was able to help.

How Foxbox Digital Powers The X Company

 serves residents who prefer the live-work-play lifestyle, but with a twist—all done from home.

The X Company provides a state-of-the-art living space and social club with incredible amenities, including a rooftop pool, gym, neighborhood bar, private workspaces, as well as professional and social events.

It’s safe to say: The X Company is different.

The X Company is currently active in six markets and rapidly expanding with 5,000 beds in their current portfolio and over $1B in construction activity.

They wanted a digital platform that improves upon the industry norm of the disconnected, poor experiences between residents and property managers.

Foxbox was perfectly positioned to help them. And that’s what we did.

"You can tell that Foxbox cares. That they really wanted to understand what we’re building. The app has a lot of technical complexity. We tried, and failed, building it before with another app developer prior to Foxbox. 

."

- Ben Brichta, Partner, The X Company

Here’s a little behind the scenes of how we made it happen.

It’s Not an App, It’s a Business Platform.

The X Company app is much more than a beautiful, convenient, and easy-to-use app for members. The custom-built platform powers the everyday business of their growing residential buildings.

The ability to easily scale with every new residential community construction.

When The X Company builds a new residential building and community, their digital-first platform allows them to easily expand to support the new local community within a few weeks.

Support members faster, with greater impact.

With this platform and some technical magic, we were able to allow The X Company community managers to use one platform, not 10.

We built an experience where a community admin can create a new residential user in their dashboard and automatically give proper permissions throughout all of the systems in one click, instead of the five screens and systems they would have done before.

Dashboard reporting that helps community managers and leadership understand how every service is being utilized.

With an ever-increasing amount of units becoming available, reporting how the residents are using the services becomes an important part of analyzing and improving core services.

We built a dashboard analytics view into how the residents were using their digital services along with their physical space experiences. This dashboard allows community managers and leadership to understand exactly how their services are utilized, when they're utilized, and what locations utilize them.

It’s Beautiful. It’s Powerful. It’s Secure. It Gives the Comfort of Modern Living for a New Type of Workforce.

The X Company, clearly different from the rest, wanted to make sure their residents’ experiences were digitally enabled.

"Your apartment building should be more than a dull stack of boxes. That’s why we don’t build apartments. We build social living communities for awesome people to thrive together."

- The X Company

Grant and revoke resident access in an instant, securely.

The X Company platform is secured by multi-factor authentication, with additional back-end security protections that protect residents when they lose phone access.

Mobile/Keyless entry that works online and offline.

The X Company App allows every resident to access every door from their bedroom to the garage and shared spaces. For common entries, the residents simply need to wave their hand in front of the sensor, as long as their phone is near them or in their pockets.

The app can grant temporary and secure access to friends, family, dog walkers, and more, all from within the app.

Real-time communication between residents and community managers.

Most platforms have an email-based or portal-based communication system which de-prioritizes response times. Our custom-built platform allows residents to speak with community managers in real-time through a chat-based support system integrated directly into the app.

Residents can use the app to find and book available conference rooms in addition to reserving and inviting friends to carefully curated social events. Entrepreneurial events, financial planning, and Yoga—you name it, they have it.

A Digital-First Community, Powered by Top-Notch Engineering, Design, and Product Teams.

The last thing The X Company needed was an app or development partner. They needed a firm to bring their large, inspiring vision to life. They thought big, and they needed a partner that was aligned with their holistic vision.

With our product strategy, visual design, and engineering sessions all running through our human-centered design process, we acted as a true digital transformation partner.

"Foxbox didn’t build requirements as a pass-through developer. The team really dug in and fit into the ecosystem and questioned what added value. They came to the assignment with a holistic understanding outside of the original scope of work. We enjoyed that."

- Ben Brichta, Partner, The X Company

We were the first company to implement two of the major digital lock platforms in one app (Avigilon and Salto KS).

The technical complexity of this cannot be understated.

Avigilon (formerly OpenPath) and Salto KS are digital access control platforms for apartment locks and common doors that are traditionally used as white-labeled platforms.

case studies

10 posts tagged with “case studies”

Airspace Data: Delivering a Properly Calibrated MVP

How We Helped Axis Group Deliver its Clients a Transformative Data & Analytics Product

How We Put Stability, Predictability & Speed at the Heart of Versapay’s Mobile Strategy

How Foxbox Modernized OrangeQC’s Android App in Two Months

How We Helped Stormwind Launch a Customized, Automated E-Learning Platform

How Foxbox Digital Powers The X Company: A Rapidly Expanding Residential Community With Over 5,000 Units and $1 Billion in Construction Activity

How We Helped Anthem Launch a Mobile Telehealth Product During a Pandemic

How NSLC’s Move to Digital Increased Parent Communication, Student Engagement, Staff Productivity and Program Referrals

How We Helped a Leading Rental Management Company Increase Revenue and Occupancy Through Custom Data-Driven Software

How We Helped Home Chef, the Kroger-Owned Meal Kit Delivery Service, Increase App Store Ratings and Meal Kit Conversions