Rebuilding HeyHey's React Native App From a Broken Codebase
Took over an outsourced mobile app with poor architecture and rebuilt it into a maintainable system that let the team ship faster.
Suyank Saraswat
Builder at Exploring
From their time as
Head of Technology
HeyHey! • 2021 - 2023
Overview
HeyHey's mobile app had been built by a third-party agency and then handed back to the internal team. When Suyank and the engineering team took it over, the codebase was in poor shape: components were hardcoded in multiple places, color variables were defined inline rather than centrally, and there was no consistent atomic architecture to speak of. The structure made it difficult to add new features without introducing regressions.
The Story
HeyHey's mobile app had been built by a third-party agency and then handed back to the internal team. When Suyank and the engineering team took it over, the codebase was in poor shape: components were hardcoded in multiple places, color variables were defined inline rather than centrally, and there was no consistent atomic architecture to speak of. The structure made it difficult to add new features without introducing regressions.
Suyank led the effort to rebuild the foundation. He rewrote the component structure using atomic architecture principles, separating atoms, molecules, and organisms so that each layer had a clear responsibility. He centralized color variables and styling tokens, eliminating the inline CSS that had made the codebase brittle.
Beyond the structural work, he also introduced animations and interaction polish that improved the perceived quality of the app for users. The celebrities and creators on the platform used this mobile app as their primary interface, so the quality bar mattered.
The result was a codebase the team could actually move in. New features could be written faster and with more confidence, and the quality improvements were visible to users in the product itself.