01 Story
A pioneer in self-publishing, Lulu released over 2 million titles in more than 225 countries
The company was set up in 2002 by Bob Young, the founder of Red Hat, in response to his own need for a better print-on-demand service.
brand since 2002,
technologies from 2018
02 Mission
Lulu offers a variety of services to authors, educators, artists, and nonprofits. With increasing numbers of users and millions of publications being sold around the world, Lulu wanted to offer a streamlined storefront for customers who need to quickly print a book, with a sharp focus on user experience and ease-of-navigation. They targeted a modern and innovative print-on-demand service with an intuitive interface packed with features sought by its users. This is how Lulu xPress was born and began generating income as soon as it launched.
03 Challenges
Single-Page Application Based on Micro-Service Rest Architecture
Lulu has numerous powerful and complex applications. To accommodate the latest front-end and User Experience trends, while attracting new customers, the print-on-demand element of Lulu’s applications suite needed to evolve into the simpler, faster, and more intuitive model that customers demanded.
The main goal was to create a single-page application that would communicate with the existing fleet of micro-services. Our work involved finding innovative ways to simplify the information architecture.
An integrated dashboard app for Spotify
The Shopify app that we built allows users to access all features of the xPress platform without having to leave their Shopify dashboard. The entire application was built according to the design and UX specifications of the Shopify platform, meaning the integration is seamless and the interface is consistent with the platform’s existing dashboard.
The Technology Behind xPress
The beating heart of the Lulu platform is the fleet of microservices which are invisible to end users. We were able to tap into the existing APIs and re-use most of the machinery that powered both the previous version of xPress and the rest of Lulu’s platform.
As we specialize in React, it was a natural candidate for the user interface, despite large parts of Lulu’s ecosystem being powered by Angular. We chose Polaris, a user interface library maintained by Shopify themselves, to ensure that our integration fits seamlessly into the existing platform interface.
Preview Service
To improve the experience of publishing books using the print-on-demand platform, our team built a new service enabling page-by-page preview of uploaded documents before committing to the printing process. The preview feature was delivered as a microservice powered by Python.
04 Technology
05 Communication
Effective work with remote teams
The project included teams located in the USA, Germany, and Poland. We set up an effective communication scenario across different time zones by utilizing several tools like Slack and Jira, as well as working in Agile methodology with daily scrums.
I needed a team that is not only technically savvy, but also willing to engage with my challenges and is actively interested in solving them. I’ve found this in Mirumee. The level of engagement is just wonderful. They walk the extra mile, thinking ahead of what may happen if I introduce some features and help me shape the customer experience.
Let’s engineer great products
and systems together
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