How Lord of The Rings, Ducks, and Customer Experience kept us sane in 2020
It’s been an unpredictable year for all of us at Marino. Yet while we’ve adapted to a new lifestyle and a different way of working, we’ve also strived to keep each other close. We’ve managed to keep our heads up and achieve great things throughout 2020. And today, we see ourselves as a team who can tackle anything.
A year since the lockdown. How has it been for Marino?
Let's take a look back at we’ve achieved in this unprecedented and challenging year...
Growing with our existing clients
We re-imagined VERO from the ground up to deliver an entirely new app experience. VERO 2.0 is a user-centred and ad-free approach to social media that allows you to easily establish and maintain meaningful, authentic relationships. It includes a range of new features including voice and video calling, new post types for sharing your games and apps and a new post bookmarking system. An app you don’t want to miss.
We released more updates for the permanent tsb app than ever before, with releases supporting PSD2 compliance and popular new features including Quick Login and Apple Pay, and have a number of other features nearing release soon.
We developed Choosy.ie for Independent News and Media — a website that focuses on providing transparent and simple product comparisons highlighting customer value, and emphasising environmentally friendly options. The Choosy.ie comparison website was nominated for Project of the Year 2020 in the Tech Excellence Awards.
New clients, new challenges
We took over development and maintenance of the Currys UK mobile apps, adding new features and helping it scale to handle record breaking traffic. The app was shortlisted for B2C App of the Year in the 2020 UK App Awards.
We’ve started work on Game of Our Lives, a groundbreaking new social platform: we are designing and engineering a perfect platform for brands, stars, influencers and followers to come together to bring about positive change in our communities. It’s due to launch this summer so keep your eyes and ears open!
Taking part in supporting the world against the pandemic was a high priority for us, so we were delighted to cross paths with our inspirational friends at Immuvid. We are preparing for the rollout of ImmuvID, a COVID-19 testing and proof of health status app. ImmuvID will allow companies and governments to open up safely before and during the rollout of vaccines, and offer proof of vaccination status.
Bringing together all internal stakeholders from Primark, we worked as a team to explore the best internal communication process. Gathering insights, exploring ideation and developing a prototype, we helped the team to guide their internal development of their platform.
We conducted deep user research to uncover the major pain points of Irish coach travellers and used the research results to improve Expressway’s digital experience. We then used prototypes to visualise a better coach journey and created a strategic roadmap to achieve these over the coming years.
We have worked with Tesco Mobile to explore their digital ecosystem, drive revenue growth and improve the customer experience.
2020 within our virtual, remote walls
In 2020 we also expanded our team into Spain and we opened a new office in London. We also set our workforce up to be able to work comfortably and productively from home.
Our Wellbeing team ran regular Zoom sessions and established new support systems to keep us focused, entertained and emotionally supported throughout the unique challenges of 2020.
These included our weekly “Coffee & Learn” sessions which saw us chat about everything from quantum physics to ducks to watching comedy stand ups. We also started our "Mindful Tuesdays" where we practice meditation together and our Chat Buddies initiative with 1:1 confidential chats to help with our employee’s wellbeing.
Who doesn't love ducks!?
Our "Marino Film Scenes" group was born the last few months and we had great fun reenacting movie scenes from films like “Lord of the Rings”, "American Hustle" or "Osage County"... with costumes and make up, of course!
The most epic reenactment of "Lord of the Rings" by "Marino Film Scenes"
Charitable donations
In 2020 we continued to support our communities, contributing to incredible charities such us: the Simon Community, Jigsaw, Irish Youth Foundation, Dyspraxia Ireland, Pieta House, Childline, Safe Ireland, Spanish Association Against Cancer as well as various Dublin hospitals. We also collaborate with MedScan3D to help produce protective equipment for nursing homes in Ireland.
Looking ahead
While continuing to grow Marino and expanding our product and services offerings are high on the priority list for the next 12 months there would be no better present for all of us than enjoying a nice lunch together at Tolka House and remembering the funniest Zoom moments of 2020 over a cuppa, or maybe something stronger!
We enjoyed some "guess the film" standups
As we look ahead to 2021, we’re hopeful for a degree of long-awaited normalcy, and to be more prepared than ever to tackle another bizarre year.
.png)
