Works with
iPhone
Android
Tech Stack
Our AR app delivers for a national sports NGO
During the winter before the 2022 Commonwealth Games, we were set a challenge to help British Triathlon, a UK sporting NGO deliver a brief to provide sporting activations during and after the Commonwealth Games event in Birmingham.
Acting as a white label tech partner for a marketing agency, we initially provided innovation consultancy to ascertain what the client was attempting to achieve.
Guiding them away from an initial idea of developing a 2D smartphone game, we focussed on their requirement from Sports England to activate people to be active, who wouldn’t normally interact with the NGO.
For this we focussed on the newly launched characters, and created an augmented reality treasure hunt, where the user could collect them in their local environment.
Furthermore, we would use the step count data from the users mobile devices to ascertain their usual daily step count, and thereafter we would develop a list of suggested activity goals that they could achieve.
Once specific characters were collected, they would unlock physical prizes from sponsors that were sent out to users.
Furthermore, we would use their location data to provide access to additional characters that enabled certain prizes to only be available in a specific area (such as at the Commonwealth Games stadia & other British Triathlon events).
There was one problem. It was now Easter & the Commonwealth Games commenced in July. For this we opted to build the app in Flutter – enabling us to use a single codebase to create both an iOS and Android application.
We selected Unity to handle the augmented reality elements within the app, embedding the Unity elements within the Flutter codebase.
This provided the functionality to access the camera and stability engines within a devices hardware & detect surfaces (to place characters) utilising Apple’s ARkit & Google’s ARCore respectively.
Our team took 2D character images and transformed them into 3D interactive objects that would appear within the AR view, with the core Flutter framework and Parse Server backend systems interacting with the Unity Framework – presenting characters, geographic location and recording achievements.
Preparation, Submission & Launch
We built the app over the course of 4 sprints consisting of 10 days each, submitting the app to the App Stores to facilitate the ~3 week approval times that were at the time being commonly experienced.
As part of the architecture considerations – we took into account the scheduled app promotion and potential for viral activity.
For this we selected a scaleable cloud infrastructure that would provide additional server resource to the backend infrastructure to support the load.
The app launched at the opening of the Commonwealth Games. It received over 20,000 users within 48 hours of launch, trending in the iOS App Store.
Here’s how British Triathlon promoted the app, along with some screenshots demonstrating the App views:
The swim, bike, run app is a brand new companion to an active outdoor lifestyle. Hidden around you are lots of different characters to collect. You’ll be able to collect them through completing different activities and actions. When you have them all you’ll then be able to convert them into prize draws to win lots of great active gear. Not only that, the swim, bike, run app will continue to grow and expand to provide interesting ways to get out and explore your local area allowing you to become more active.
COLLECT CHARACTERS
There’s lots of characters to collect, all with different benefits and attribute to different prizes. You find some by looking around your environment, others by completing activity challenges and others in specific geographic locations. These friendly things can help get you out and about in your local area.
GET ACTIVE
We have an activity challenge for you. Walk or move 10,000 steps for four days in one week to collect a super special character and be in with a chance to win some amazing prizes.
LEARN
Get key information and direction for how to lead an active lifestyle directly from your phone. The app aims to make being active fun not boring and we’ll constantly add new information plans and activities to keep it fun and new for you.
Connect to your phone’s in-built Healthkit step tracker, to win characters when you walk over 10,000 steps per day.
