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.
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.
