So with Accella celebrating five years of being in business, I thought I would ask some of the designers, developers, and project managers What the most unique or exciting project that you worked on while at Accella? Here are some of the responses that I received.

Mitch Maltese

Art Director
4 years with Accella

The work that we did for Painfulpleasures.com was definitely unique in terms of content.  It’s a great example of a niche, social media/ecommerce website.  A lot of the work that we do is rather unique for the industries our clients are in; the work that we’ve done with Volvo Rents has also been pretty cool, especially since we’ve been able to see the site progress so far from where it was just a few years ago.

John Rainey

Vice President of Business Development
3 Years with Accella

I have talked with countless numbers of entrepreneurs and companies that have the “Next Greatest App” idea that just can’t fail.  Inevitably, a lot of those ideas were never thought through more than a night out at the bar.  Every now and then, I’d say about once a month, someone throws out a feasible idea for an app that actually makes our team pretty excited to work on, both from posing a bit of a challenge along with being an innovative idea.

The app that we created alongside Viderity for the National Archives was one such application.  The app, called Today’s Document, shows the user a different historical document each day, kind of a “this document in history”.  Users can then save the document to their favorites, share it with friends via email or social media, or scroll though the archive of documents found on the app.

The app needed to be created for the iPhone, iPad, and Android device simultaneously and with a short turnaround time.  We had several developers working on this at one time while Viderity was busy finishing up graphics for the app.  The developers used some interesting techniques of loading images within the app that kept the file size down while also allowing users to seamlessly scroll through all of the documents.

Hank McLaughlin

Mobile Application Developer
2 Years with Accella

The iPhone app that I worked on for Quadzilla was probably the most exciting and interesting app that I’ve built.  Aside from the concept being really cool, the graphics on the app just make it stand out in my mind as one of the coolest apps I’ve worked on.

Colin Foley

Web Application Developer
1 Year with Accella

One of the most exciting projects I have worked on was a day Long project we did for a prospective client.

It was a simple web demo application that the client wanted built to see how well we could work under pressure. We were given the parameters at 8 AM and had to work collaboratively in order to complete the project by 5PM.  There was a great sense of urgency on everyone at Accella that worked on the project, and without the entire team working together we wouldn’t have been able to complete it.  It was non-stop developing and thinking on our feet.

Jacob Haskins

Director of Mobile Development
4 years with Accella

Over the four and half years I’ve been here I’ve worked on a lot of different projects, but the two that stick out in my mind the most are Indentia and TrialPad.  Both projects really stretched the boundaries of what one can do with web and mobile applications and were very intense projects.  Looking back, there were a lot of frustrating moments with each of them, but the satisfaction that comes about after staring at the screen and finally fixing the problem far outweighs the frustration. 

Indentia was written all in flash with a php/mysql backend. When you go to a hospital, school, or any office building there are literally thousands of signs all around the building and most people don’t notice them more than just to tell them where they are going.  But each of those signs needs to be designed, fabricated, installed, and maintained.  Indentia is an online software tool that allows the sign designers to map out their signs and their placement.  You can design signs within the app and then upload a building’s architectural floor plan and drag out and arrange signs so you can see where everything will go in the building. You can then dynamically generate pdf documentation on all aspects of the project.

With TrialPad, lawyers and in-court personnel can easily display documents, videos, and other evidence to everyone in a courtroom via their iPad and audio visual equipment.  There was a lot that went in to that project and we had many unique hurdles to overcome in order to make the app work properly.

Ryan Wright

Web Application Developer
3 Years with Accella

I think one of the most interesting projects that I worked on was for PainfulPleasures.com. It was a challenging project, one in which we were integrating drupal, xcart, vbulletin and kayako with a single login system.  It’s exciting to work on websites that are a bit challenging and require you to think a little.

Steve Demby

Chief Operating Officer
5 years with Accella

I’ve been with the company since the start and have seen a lot of clients’ projects start and finish, but the one that stands out in my mind the most has to be the work that we do with Volvo Rents.  Building a website for them, launching it, and continually updating and enhancing it has been a lot of fun.  Its kind of funny when you visit a website, you might only be on it for two minutes and not realize the amount of time, effort, and thought that went in to designing and developing it.  We have worked alongside their marketing department for the past two years creating a website, organically growing traffic, and driving leads to their sales team.