Sapere were approached by David Stewart owner of Walkingworld to take their ‘walk catalogue’ and make it available to existing and new subscribers via a mobile app. The mobile app would also need to connect to an existing web service and work with the data ‘as is’ to produce all the inputs and outputs the application would require. The Walkingworld web platform already used an API developed in house for the ‘back end’ of the website, so by tapping into this we could remove redundancy and use one source for everything.
Problems
A common (and quite obvious!) problem with needing an app for walking is that the user may not have an internet connection available. This immediately rules out the ability to use the ‘traditional’ mapping technologies like Google maps. This presented quite a large challenge – how do you take a map, at various levels of detail, and store it offline allowing users to access it when theres no connection available?
Solution
We approached the project as we always do. Firstly, by producing a specification document, always ensuring lots of communication, having the occasional meeting and mostly by making sure that the app met all the objectives the client set. We believe by building a simple to use cross platform app Walkingworld can make their 1000’s of walks available to an even bigger audience and app will their service to now be used anywhere and by anyone.
The solution allows existing subscribers to access and save walks for use offline and allows Walkingworld to utilise another method to increase their customer base.
The app works by utilising a web service to push and pull all its data and a unique and bespoke offline mapping method for handling the display of OS maps.
This offline mapping method caches a map at various levels / zooms and allows the map to be assembled later and in real time on a users device, removing the need for an internet connection when navigating the map of the walk.
The app can display a users direction of travel and allows them to easily navigate between waypoints on a walk with associated information available for each of them.
The app is available in both iTunes and the Google Play Store.