Anatomy of an Award Winning App
Background to the project
In 2002 founder and company director of Pixelwork Matt Harris focused his MA dissertation on location based services and the prevalence these would play in the development of mobile phone technology in the coming years – the ability to provide location relevant contextual information via handheld devices connected to the internet.
At the time 3G didn’t exist, but it was coming. Phones with GPS capabilities were also some way off and no-one had any idea that Apple would be the company responsible for producing the device that would dominate these services in 2010.
In 2003, whilst working with the Thames Gateway South Essex Partnership Matt proposed to develop a pilot project showcasing this technology in south Essex. Working closely with colleagues Markus Quarta and Steve Cullen from Something Labs, whom he met on his MA course at Ravensbourne College of Communication and Design, and the Greengrid partnership, a pilot was produced for Windows Mobile at Davy Down and presented to the then minister for the Environment David Miliband.
The success of this pilot and a smaller pilot at the Hamptons in Peterborough (developed with Peterborough Council, Something Labs and their Natural Networks team) was successful enough to garner enough interest into funding an official version of the explorer at the Nene Valley Country Park, also in Peterborough.
Utilising the technology developed on Windows along with an iPhone version of the app; this was launched in 2010 to great critical success and is now available via handhelds from the visitor centre and also as a download from the Apple store via iTunes.
The Coalhouse Fort implementation
When Thurrock Council expressed interest in developing a Mobile tour at Coalhouse Fort in East Tilbury we already had some ideas of what we wanted to include in the content and the technical side of the app. Matt, having spent much of his youth playing at Coalhouse Fort was excited to get a chance to really showcase the technology in the area.
First of all,as we had already been involved in the branding and signage development at the park and so already had a great understanding of the brand requirements and message we needed to deliver. We also felt that in order for the project to be a success we needed to implement a social media strategy at the outset by incorporating not only social media channels to drive and build awareness but to also incorporate these into the technical development of the app itself.
Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund one of the key demands of the funding was to involve the community in the development of the project. Working with our sister company, Agency East a Community Interest Company (CIC) it was essentially their role to engage with various community groups, schools and individuals to help generate the content.
Engaging with the community
First of all we needed to drive awareness of the park so we shot a series of HD videos at the key zones that would be featured in the Mobile Explorer and uploaded these to a branded Youtube channel, we also established a presence on Facebook , Twitter and a photo group using Flickr.
The idea being to not only spread awareness of the project and park but also by using Flickr we could gather photographic content for the Explorer from visitors to the park, keeping new fresh great content coming in. We set up a monthly contest for Flickr users which saw some fantastic wildlife pictures enter the group that were all taken at the park. Agency East ran a photo event with Thurrock Camera Club where they gave out free cameras to visitors which in turn generated more interest for not only the park and Explorer but also for the camera club.
Agency East also liaised with East Tilbury Primary School and The Gateway Academy who developed sculptures, ad campaigns, films and posters all around the park generating more content to be digitised and put on the website and used in various exhibitions around the borough. The Bata Reminiscence tour planned for East Tilbury, essentially a trail featuring social history at the outset was devised and developed with the Bata Reminiscence and Resource Centre, another community group who took a fantastic lead in the content development.
In terms of the community engagement figures we needed to reach to satisfy the HLF we easily surpassed this in the very early stages of the project.
The App
Previous incarnations of the Mobile Explorer had been developed on Windows devices and the first version was built in Flash. This proved to be very difficult and bug ridden due to the vast variations in differences in devices and how they handled the various versions of Windows. With the rise of the iPhone and our experience in working with the Natural Networks version we knew we would just enhance the current version of the iPhone app due to the amount of time in R&D already spent on this version.
Building on the social media idea we realised that in order to help drive awareness of the app we had to build in the facility to share the content during a vist. We added in a share tab for those devices with a network connection enabling users to share on Twitter or Facebook their experience of the tour with a predefined message and for Twitter an automatic hash tag #mobileexplorer, once again helping to drive the brand experience.
With the already implemented Flickr group gathering some fantastic photos we wanted to utilise these, so the picture gallery area of the app actually brings in the Flickr Group feed (for Coalhouse fort) and the Bata tag for the East Tilbury tour. By doing so the app becomes more dynamic with new imagery appearing every time you visit but also enabling you to contribute to the story by submitting your own photos, even from your own phone on site.
For the storytelling aspect of the app we immediately knew that we wanted the community to be involved not only in the story and scripting but in the actual recorded voiceover. Previously we had used professional voices for other versions of the app but because of the passion and enthusiasm we found working with the various groups we really wanted this to come across to not only the users of the app but also to give a sense of ownership to everyone involved.For Coalhouse Fort the Park trail is narrated by Ray Reeves, the park ranger and the fort trail by Jonathan Catton, Heritage and Museum Officer at Thurrock council. For the Bata trail we enlisted Mike Tarbard, a local who had grown up on the Bata Estate.
The Delivery
On the 1st June the Explorer was launched at Coalhouse Fort and East Tilbury with representatives from the HLF, local council, community groups and volunteers all testing and reviewing the app. Part of our delivery requirements were to provide 10 handsets for rental use at Coalhouse Fort and East Tilbury.
Very early in the project we wanted to customise the handsets to tie in with the whole concept of an “exploring device” . The iPhone 3GS – our recommended handset (due to cost and inbuilt technology) just wasn’t ‘sturdy’ enough off the shelf to fulfill this requirement so we tested various cases out to see which would answer all the questions we had, essentially they needed to be :
- tough and hard wearing
- difficult to get into
- look functional and sturdy (the explorer factor)
- waterproof
- brandable
- the ability to block the home button
After testing various types we came across the Otterbox case. With 3 layers of protection and in a bright black and yellow design and a belt clip, we also figured we could customise the case by hiding the Apple logo and branding it with the Coalhouse fort logo, due to the circular nature of our original design, this worked perfectly. We also figured out a way to block the home button so that once the app is up and running the only way to get out of it is to turn the phone off, thus preventing anyone from accessing other parts or apps on the phone.
Alongside the devices obviously the App is also available to download from the Apple store but we also developed an Expression Engine website, using XML and Google maps API, to pull in the data via XML that is available on the Mobile Explorer. This site was launched at the same time as the Explorer was announced at Coalhouse Fort.
The Success
Early on in the development of the Mobile Explorer at Coalhouse Fort we quickly realised we had a successful formula in the making – social media, app, community engagement, graphic design, multimedia content and web development. The number of people involved in the project and the support from the various organisations funding and delivering key areas of the project began to prove how successful an approach this was.
With the Thurrock Business awards looming we entered it into the Innovation category. Following an interview by representatives from Calor Gas we knew we had a winner on our hands from their incredible enthusiasm for the project and as such we were awarded the win for Best Business Innovation. This in turn lead to us being short-listed for the countywide award. We were then interviewed by Stephen Alexander from marketing agency Alexony. This lead to another win, also for Best Business Innovation.
Subsequent interest in the Explorer has lead to it being successful in a European funded bid for a much wider area of South Essex and so it’s success is set to grow and grow.
Download the App from the Apple Store
