As one of the globe’s most iconic and visited destinations Times Square attracts millions of visitors a year. However it also has a vibrant community of over 230,000 ‘locals’ who have made the area their home or place of work. To serve this vibrant community The Times Square Alliance partnered with I-SITE to create a mobile App for their Crossroads program. The goal of Crossroads is to offer exclusive deals and discounts for local businesses, provide special insight on the area and promote events tailored to residents and workers.
For quick access to content and features the I-SITE team proposed an easy to navigate architecture with three primary content area – Deals, Events and Insider. As an added feature the user can select which area is most of interest to them and customize the App to load that content first. For the Alliance to publish important timely content the I-SITE team proposed an Alerts feature visible each time the user opens the App. It was determined during that up to the minute social and feature content would be published through the upcoming redesign of the Times Square website rather than the App.
Some of the key features of the Crossroads App include:
- Program sign up validated by a Times Square zip code
- Clean, attractive interface with strong visuals and Crossroads program branding
- Deal redemption through a screen shown during purchase at selected restaurant, store, theatre etc
- Deal Favoriting and Save for Later features
- Social sharing
- Tracking and content management through Salesforce
- Deployment on iOS, Android and Windows Mobile
During the planning phase the I-SITE team developed user flows, wireframes and a data management plan for the written and visual content housed in Salesforce. The I-SITE team designed the screen interfaces for the highest degree of standardization across the three platforms. All development was native on the each of the selected platforms.
The Alliance team will be responsible daily for the updating of the content for the App. I-SITE will provide ongoing support and design and development for future releases.
In 2013 I-SITE teamed up with the Great Apes Survival Partnership [GRASP] headquartered at the United Nations in Nairobi, Kenya to create a mobile application that will draw on the rich and diverse content of the leaders in ape conservation. The App available both for Android and iPhone features bonobos, gorillas, chimpanzees and orangutans facts along with current projects being run by the partners in the field. Previewed at the Great Apes Summit in Fall 2013, The app launched in mid-February featuring projects from the African Wildlife Foundation, The Orangutan Conservancy, The Goualougo Triangle Ape Project and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.
With rich infographics, photography and video Great Ape lovers can now follow projects they are interested in and donate directly to the project partners. Post launch the GRASP team will manage the content through a custom CMS and continue to add partners and projects to the App.
I-SITE follows the success of iGorilla, the first mobile application dedicated the the conservation of Great Apes.
As techies, designers and major supporters of STEM education we were excited when education nonprofit Iridescent Learning approached us to design and develop a mobile app that teaches children and all bird lovers about different types of birds, their habitats and behaviors.
The “Build” part of the app provides an opportunity for the user to test their learning by creating a bird that is adapted to a specific environment. On completion the user can ‘fly’ the bird through its natural environment.
To create the rich, illustrative design we worked with the illustrations of Ioana and videos from our friends at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. We designed the app to appeal to the younger demographic, as well as to not distract from the important learning aspect.
Build a Bird was featured in the Apps Store’s ‘New and Newsworthy’ section and downloaded over 50,000 times.
For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
In early 2013 the I-SITE developed and launched the Android version of the free Downtown NYC smartphone app, which is the latest in a series of web and mobile applications created for our client, the Alliance for Downtown New York. The application was first developed as an iOS app for iPhones and iPads. I-SITE previously launched the downtownny.com website in the spring of 2011.
The app was created for tourists, residents and workers in Lower Manhattan to to find events on an integrated Google map, share the events and locations via social media, and add events to their calendar apps on their mobile devices.
The Android app’s interface is very similar to the iOS version, but customized for Android. Both apps utilize an easy-to-use, clean interface to enable the user to, in seconds, find events and locations that interest them. Downtown Alliance staff can easily add events and other data to the application through the same CMS interface as they use to manage the website content and iPhone app.
In 2010 the I-SITE team paved the way for animal conservation on mobile with iGorilla, the first iPhone app with the sole purpose of supporting the plight of Africa’s endangered mountain gorilla.
The idea for the app came about after CEO Ian Cross traveled to Virunga in 2006 after attending a creative economy conference in Rwanda. On his return Ian reached out to Emmanuel De Merode and Samantha Newport of Virunga National Park to discuss developing a social network for the gorilla families. With the explosion in the number of smart phones worldwide this idea eventually evolved into iGorilla.
Sourcing up-to-date content from the field team of scientists and rangers the users were able to select and follow a gorilla family, read updates and watch videos and donate directly to the park to support one of the many projects dedicated to gorilla conservation and helping the community.
Soon after release the App was featured on the home page of the BBC News website. For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
Sprout contacted the I-SITE team to create a media rich mobile app to encourage both kids and parents to complete healthy challenges together. The app named Family Challenge is part of a larger ‘healthy living’ initiative called “Be Kind to Yourself“. The app utilizes themes from both Sprout and Iceland-based children’s television program LazyTown programming and presents a parent-child team with ten healthy challenges. Each challenge is comprised of an activity that focuses on healthy eating or exercise. After a parent-child team has completed the activity, they mark it as complete and move on to the next activity. At the completion of a set number of challenges, the parent-child team wins an ‘incentive’ in the form of a music video, theme song or a themed photo frame wallpaper.
The project from concept to development to wireframing to design was highly collaborative. Highlights include:
- Rewards you with videos and other multimedia on reaching milestones
- Creation of custom wallpapers with users own photos that can be shared through Facebook
- Tracks your progress in with a Energy Meter and ‘Trophy Case’
- Reminders to complete the next challenge
The Family Challenge App App received notable awards including Best Family Mobile App at the 2013 IAC Awards. Post release the I-SITE team continued to update the App and issue new releases.
For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization or company contact Ian Cross.
In 2013 Hidden City Philadelphia approached I-SITE to design and develop a website and web application for their site-specific Festival. The goal was to develop and engage a passionate community of festival supporters and participants inspired by a ‘kickstarter’ community-driven model.
Phase I of the website was focused on promoting the Hidden City sites, the artists and their projects. Festival supporters were able to create user accounts and donate not only money but the valuable volunteer time and project materials that are vital to seeing artist project through to fruition. The I-SITE team selected Ruby on Rails for the CMS and website because it is a clean and efficient web framework for building robust web applications.
The next phase of the project involved addition of Events features and ticketing through project partner Ticket Leap.
For more information on this project and if your interested in creating something similar for your organization contact Ian Cross.
I-SITE teamed up with Josette Bonafino of MYX: Multicultural Youth Exchange to create the Armenian Housing Crisis iPad App in order to raise awareness of the chronic poverty housing in Armenia and to offer support to some of the country’s most vulnerable families.
This storytelling app features an historic timeline of Armenia, an overview of the country’s current economic situation, video interviews with domik families and interactive infographics. The team also created a responsive website to promote the App and a Web page to accept donations for a project that provides free showers to the domik residents.
To date the program has raised over $3,000 with 100% of the funds going directly to the community. MYX recently traveled back to Armenia to continue work on the project and I-SITE will continue to update the App based on new content.
