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Introduction
With ibeacons more of a pain than a solution what if you could leverage the location data of a mobile user. They already have location services on, unlike bluetooth!
With this prototype admin users can set up coordinates, messages and media to push to users when they walk into or drive by their favorite stores.
Background
At Webonise we had an experimental team that would take up fun side projects from time to time. We knew that we wanted to build an app that used geo location so that we could show our existing and potential clients how this technology can be used to message users in physical space. I worked on requirement gathering, UX and UI as well as branding and marketing materials. Typically I would begin the project then assign a designer to continue the process. The video will show some updates that my art director Dana made later on in the project.
We chose to use the open API available from Groupon and Living Social to target deals to app users. The on boarding process included a screen for users to choose what kind of deals they were interested in and that way they only were pushed notifications for discounts they might actually want. For instance if I say I like pizza, if I walk by or drive by a shop that has a deal available the app will notify me of the shop and the discount available, then link the user to make the purchase through Groupon or Living Social
Challenges
At the time that we build this there wasn't really anyone using geo location for this purpose so we tried to use our imagination to figure out the best way to present users with this concept.
Proposed Solution
This solution uses a very minimal interface to just deliver the information users need. We have a list view and a map view for easy browsing.
Recommendations
The biggest challenges with geofencing is the unpredictable nature of satellites and location accuracy. We wanted the notification to trigger within just a few feet if the person was walking but realized we had to make the fence wider to accommodate for satellite inaccuracy. This concept is more common now than it was when I worked on this project and is much more accurate now. Im proud that we built something we hadn't seen before and made it feel light and easy.
More Information
Unfortunetly this app is not on the app or play stores as it was an experiment and selling tool for the agency.
The top images here show you what the app looked like when we built it. It was built on a hybrid framework. The bottom most images are the MVP we built to test the concept. Here you can also see the back end we built to add manually set geo points if required.
GeoFence Prototype
With ibeacons more of a pain than a solution what if you could leverage the location data of a mobile user. They already have location services on, unlike bluetooth!
With this prototype admin users can set up coordinates, messages and media to push to users when they walk into or drive by their favorite stores.