Case Study: Rhino
Rhino gives renters more options by replacing traditional security deposits with a small monthly fee. They hired me to help them better define their user interface, re-architect their CSS, and integrate with the Equifax credit reporting API.
About Rhino
Rhino is giving renters more options by replacing traditional security deposits with a small monthly fee. Their service cuts down the cost of renting a new apartment signficantly, which gives renters access to better apartments and more money in their pockets.
How I helped
Rhino engaged me in the period before their planned launch. Two main tracks of work stood in their way:
- Improving their onboarding user experience.
- Integrating with Equifax to provide on-demand credit rating for prospective customers.
Give your users that polished experience
When Rhino came to me asking if I could help them polish their app for launch, they had built a user onboarding workflow that was functional, but had some inconsistencies in its design. These included small but non-trivial issues, like poor background image alignment and mobile display problems.
I helped the team at Rhino understand their problems through both design and engineering lenses. When you're nearing launch, it's critical you consider both the ideal implementation as designed, as well as the tradeoffs that need to be made in order to deliver a reasonable product by your deadline. I sought to help clarify that sweet spot for Rhino so they could launch with a version of the product that gave them confidence in the marketplace but didn't break their budget.
Get on-demand credit score reporting for your customers
Rhino uses both TransUnion and Equifax to obtain basic credit information from their renters. Navigating the myriad API options in the Equifax API documentation can be tricky. I helped Rhino develop a custom API library to submit credit reporting requests to Equifax and retrieve their prospective renters' credit score.
Want to integrate credit reporting into your Rails application? Get in touch and tell me a bit about your product. I'm happy to share what I know.
What they say
Working with an outsourced development team has had some surprising upsides: among them the speed with which we were able to build our initial MVP, but when problems have gotten abstract or needed truly expert-level resources, things have broken down.
Some problems that had been difficult to not only solve but even define with other consultants were defined and solved quickly with Teejay after a brief conversation.
He helped us move our product from something we could launch and live with to something of which we could be proud, and he didn't want to commit to work until he knew he could do it to a high level of satisfaction, and it helped us internally to frame these vague problems in terms of achievable milestones.
Finding full stack experts who can dive into the project and begin to immediately deliver results for problems that are not fully known at the beginning has been a challenge, and Teejay certainly delivered.
— Bryan Woods, CTO, Rhino