SaaS for Digital Researches.

Our client is a startup based in Germany that was researching the possibility of building an MVP concept of an online tool to help knowledge workers across multiple industries, primarily the legal field, easily create long and complex structured documents for their research work. Those documents consist of individual references and parts of many source documents, such as online articles or PDFs.

Because the primary goal was to simplify data capturing, users needed to capture data and add it to their projects with the fewest possible actions. That requirement led us to build a custom Chrome extension for a single-click capturing experience, primarily using the native capabilities of the browser itself.

Seamless data capturing was one of the first challenges. We also had to make sure that heavy sets of transferred information were effectively structured in our databases, so users could later organize them into smaller pieces, use them across one or more projects, and build complex hierarchical structures.

Since our team took over the project at a very early stage, the main challenges were to properly collect core functional and non-functional requirements from the main stakeholders and to decide on the right implementation approach, especially for capturing content from online resources.

The next significant challenge was the data storage format in the databases, since the project assumed an extensive data flow. For big projects with multiple sources, the amount of data stored by one user could reach significant ranges.

Last but not least was the safety of the stored data. Since the primary market is the legal industry, which already sits under multiple data privacy regulations, delivering a highly secure solution was critical.

To start the project, our team proposed dividing the solution into two parts: a web application and a Chrome extension. The web application is a working space that lets users interact with clipped or uploaded content and documents and create, save, and manage multiple projects. The Chrome extension lets users clip and transfer content from online resources as quickly as possible.

To ensure a consistent data format, our team decided to convert and store all content, including uploaded PDF documents, as HTML files, which later gave us unlimited flexibility for editing and structuring in the application.

To secure the application and its data, all databases and data flows were encrypted at rest and in transit. All information was accessible only by the user who created it, with no access for system administrators. We also followed the OWASP security standards to align our security measures with industry-wide best practices.