Cross-Platform Mobile App for a D2C Brand

Overview

A cross-platform mobile application for a US direct-to-consumer personal-care brand, built with React Native and Expo and backed by AWS Amplify. The app delivered the brand’s customer experience on iOS (and web via React Native Web) with a managed cloud backend for auth and data.

The Challenge

The brand needed a single, maintainable codebase to ship a branded mobile experience across platforms, with a cloud backend it didn’t have to operate by hand and a quality bar high enough to release confidently. Camera-based features and form-driven flows had to feel native while staying within one shared code surface.

What We Built

An Expo-managed React Native app organized under src/, with navigation handled by React Navigation (stack and bottom-tab navigators), global state in Redux with redux-thunk, and UI composed from NativeBase components and a custom design system. Forms use react-hook-form with Yup validation, and device features include expo-camera. The backend is integrated through AWS Amplify (configured via aws-exports.js) for authentication and data. A full Detox end-to-end test suite (e2e/), Jest unit tests, and TypeScript types round out the codebase, with linting (Airbnb/Prettier) and Husky/lint-staged enforcing quality on commit. Activity on the repo spans 2020 through 2023.

Technologies & Approach

React Native on Expo for fast cross-platform delivery and over-the-air iteration; AWS Amplify to provide a managed GraphQL/auth backend without bespoke infrastructure; Redux for predictable state; and Detox for reliable on-device end-to-end testing. TypeScript and a strict lint/format pipeline kept the long-lived codebase maintainable across its multi-year lifespan.

Outcome / Impact

Produced a maintained, multi-year cross-platform app codebase complete with automated end-to-end and unit test coverage and a managed cloud backend. It demonstrated the studio’s ability to take a D2C brand’s mobile product from greenfield through sustained iteration with production-grade testing discipline.

Capabilities Demonstrated

• Cross-platform mobile development with React Native and Expo
• Managed cloud backends with AWS Amplify (auth + GraphQL data)
• Robust app architecture: navigation, Redux state, typed code
• End-to-end mobile test automation with Detox plus Jest unit testing