A social media app where travelers discover new places posted by their friends
When the CEO of Spotvice came to us, they had more of an intention than a definite idea – a desire to help people get as much pleasure out of traveling as possible. Our goal was to develop a user-friendly iOS application and an attractive landing page for it. The app was to serve several purposes. First, it would help people find new places based on advice from friends (not just strangers on the internet). Second, it would let people create a bucket list of places they want to see, whether a new French restaurant in LA or a gorgeous waterfall they once drove by.
The travel industry has been growing steadily for a while now. In fact, it has outpaced the growth of the global economy in 2017, and this trend is not expected to stop. Estimates by the World Travel and Tourism Council predict average industry growth of 3.9% per year over the next ten years.
These numbers, combined with inevitable technological advancements, suggest that travel applications such as Spotvice are likely to be successful and continue gaining popularity.
The platform administrator can view all users and their posts, create and delete profiles, and add new photos with locations. They can also check statistics about the number of users and posts and can track the most visited places.
Travelers can create profiles, attach photos, capture favorite places, and keep them together in one place. Travelers can also share their favorite spots with friends, locate themselves, and discover the nearest places to spend their free time.
As we built Spotvice from the ground up, design and business logic naturally were the first things we did. The design of the iOS application features a simple and comfortable structure with soothing, aesthetically pleasing colors. We designed all of the icons to be discreet and easy to understand and custom made each animation. For the logo, our team played around with various map-themed ideas, and the result was a geopin-styled icon.
For the landing page, we went with the same color scheme used in the application and added some lively animations to make the user experience entertaining.
We built a Django-based control panel to manage the platform and developed a REST API to feed the native iOS application. We integrated Amazon S3 to store media cost-efficiently.
As Spotvice is in a way a hybrid of several social media services, we had to make sure that the features it offers from these services were supported seamlessly. Among others, we added Facebook integration because we knew that our client wanted Spotvice to be a friend-based platform.
We also integrated the Google Places API to process geolocation data, which was extremely important for this project. By implementing Apple Maps as well, we made it easier to find beautiful locations.
The iOS application was released in the beginning of April 2017. Currently, we’re waiting for user feedback so we can analyze the app and make improvements before starting development of Spotvice for Android.
Using Spotvice, users can post images of anything they have seen and tried during certain trips.
Spotvice helps users discover what fascinating things they can do at any destination, relying on tips from their trusted Facebook friends.
Users can see what comments and images their friends shared after visiting various places.
Users can capture images of their favorite destinations, create a series of images, keep them together in one place and then share these images with their friends.
"They are very detail-oriented. They push your limits."
