Building the Progressive Web App (PWA) to Manage Haandle—a Complete Parental Control System
Raising children in the digital age can be challenging. Parents have to protect their kids from explicit content, cyberbullying, and excessive internet use that threatens to rob them of their childhood.
HTML5
Bootstrap
Angular
Paul Hauge, a parent with more than 25 years of experience in the tech industry, noticed that options were limited for parental control systems, and many were difficult to use. That’s why he decided to create Haandle, a parental control device that would connect to a home router and go above and beyond all existing products.
Paul built his Proof of Concept (PoC) for the device that demonstrated its effectiveness and led to a successful round of crowdfunding. He then decided the next logical step would be transforming Haandle into a Universal Endpoint Management (UEM) solution. In other words, he wanted to create a system that allowed parents to manage any device (e.g., laptops, smartphones, tablets) regardless of whether it was connected through data or mobile internet.
The device itself—a white box that connected to the router—covered WiFi at home, while the newly launched “Haandle Go!” App helped parents control iOS and Android devices connected through data plans. However, the solution had some significant limitations.
Paul knew that in order to succeed, he needed to create a comprehensive solution that made it easy for parents to configure settings for all devices used by each account. That meant Paul needed to change the architecture that defined how each device sourced its rules.
Initially, he decided to have his in-house team handle the device software and mobile app while outsourcing the replacement of the rudimentary web app to a third-party. His plan was to have the web app manage the Haandle boxes with a proper web-based app, but that vision evolved once he consulted Net Solutions.
Paul discovered Net Solutions in his search for web development experts. Impressed by their decades of experience, he hired them to build the app. Everyone agreed that, since mobile devices were becoming more and more popular, it only made sense to build a Progressive Web App (PWA) that parents could install on their mobile devices and use as an independent app to set controls desktops, tablets, and mobile devices.
Haandle’s in-house developers built the backend and provided all the necessary APIs for the web-app’s functionality. Meanwhile, Net Solutions’ Business Analysts worked closely with Paul to identify the optimal user journeys that parents should take when configuring internet access for their children.
Built in Angular, the PWA for Haandle had all the features Paul envisioned, including:
Device Management: Administrators could authorize any connected devices, reported by the box as part of the master account.
Rules Management: Parents could easily set rules for their registered devices, including time windows when kids could access the internet.
Filter Management: Haandle allowed parents to follow age-appropriate restrictions defined by Google SafeSearch, and the parents could fine-tune which categories of websites they allowed or restricted. Parents could then configure custom filters to restrict specific sites.
Additionally, Haandle’s comprehensive filter management system allowed for:
Haandle’s launch received praise in the media for going above and beyond existing products, granting parents granular control over their children’s internet use. Parents found it a powerful, comprehensive, and easy-to-use solution, protecting their children while allowing them to benefit from all the internet has to offer.
Net Solutions proved to be an integral partner, taking the time to understand Paul’s vision, working with this in-house tech team, and delivering a key component of this unique parental control system.
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