Image Credit : All images from the City of Newcastle app, designed by We Make Apps.
Project Overview
The City of Newcastle app was launched in 2019 and provides visitors and residents with a range of useful information about cafes, restaurants, attractions, cultural facilities, events and news throughout the City.
To help engage users with the existing rich data available about the city, the app was enhanced to support curated walking trails taking in any number of places in Newcastle.
These trails connect any number of existing places together in a theme, such as coastal attractions, places to eat, a single-day itenerary or as a tie in with a corresponding festival.
The app makes use of a unique split-screen interface, providing users with a map view and content view of each place. The content includes photos, rich text, audio podcasts and virtual tours. Users can 'like' each trails, providing other users with feedback on the popular trails, as well as share through social media and other channels.
Since it's launch, the Walking Trails feature has been used in connection with a number of local festivals and leveraged as part of a post-COVID tourism campaign.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
We Make Apps is a Melbourne-based specialist app development agency. The We Make Apps team that undertook the project:
- Mick Byrne, analyst and account manager.
- Cameron Hendy, project manager.
- Simon Mathews, user interface and user experience designer.
- Haidar Al'Ogaily, app developer.
- Phillip McKenna, admin developer.
- Mark Di Dio, app developer.
On the City of Newcastle side, input was provided from:
- James Vidler, Living Lab Coordinator
- Nathaniel Bavinton, Innovation & Futures Manager
Input from local businesses was provided from Newcastle's Makers X Traders organisation, headed by Anne Kempton.
Project Brief
The City of Newcastle felt that the existing app, while providing users with a wide array of great content, needed another layer of curation and engagement to surface that content for users in a more meaningful way.
Staff at the City of Newcastle collaborated with local business group, the Newcastle Makers X Traders, to help prepare a range of walking trails throughout the city that showcased specific groups of businesses or followed specific themes.
Importantly, the brief included a requirement for staff at the City of Newcastle to be able to create and manage trails through a simple web-based admin interface, without any specific technical skills. The actual walking route between places needed to be generated automatically, along with a simple publishing workflow to allow trails to be authored by a broader group, before being approved by administrators.
Project Need
The app fulfils a particular place in the digital environment of a city like Newcastle. Content about places, news and events are drawn from a wide variety of sources and presented to users in an intuitive and easy form - suitable for both residents and visitors.
The addition of the Walking Trails feature in the app takes this content to another level, providing a curated and engaging structure to what is otherwise a 'directory' of content. This narrative element opens a new channel for local businesses and the City of Newcastle to communicate with their residents.
The simple and robust custom content management solution provided with the app allows the City of Newcastle to easily add new content and keep the app fresh and relevant.
User Experience
Our solution for the Walking Trails within the app really focused on the experience of end users. Following an iterative design process, involving stakeholders and end-users, we produced an innovative experience within the app - where users are able to see both the map of the walking trail and information about any place along the trail on a combined screen.
The app provides users with an intuitive, touch-based interface with the ability to change the screen area between map and content, swipe left or right to navigate between places, while supporting all the pinch and zoom gestures on the map and scrolling within the content card.
Project Marketing
The Walking Trails feature in the City of Newcastle app has been a significant success. Initially launched with just 6 trails organised by local business groups, the platform has since been used to create trails for public art and cultural attractions and as tie-ins with contemporary festivals.
At the end of 2020, the Walking Trails were expanded as part of a 'Hometown Holiday' campaign, encouraging residents in nearby cities and towns to visit Newcastle. A range of trails were created, each as a different itinerary for a one or two visit in the city.
Project Privacy
The app is available for public download and has been promoted by the City of Newcastle. There's no special privacy requirements in relation to this app or the Walking Trails feature.
Digital - Government Services
The provision of timely government services has been transformed as applications and sites are developed and implemented to either replace or complement previous methods. Be it the delivery of current and up to date critical information, compliance, community support and engagement, notification and registration or providing greater accessibility to government resources.
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