An independent health promotion charity in Australia aims to spread awareness about walking and jogging to help people stay fit and healthy. The organization also backs people and communities who want to take up walking and jogging to the next level of fitness by spreading awareness among neighborhoods. Their objective is to encourage walking for recreation, fitness, social involvement, and transport.
The need to walk together
To tackle soaring problem of the obesity epidemic and related diseases in their region, customer walked in with their need for a solution that could encourage people to smoothly collaborate and easily create, discover, and share tracks to walk. They required an engaging solution that could:
Provide maps of walks: Customer needed a solution that could enable users to create walks using a simple web interface. The solution needs to allow them to set start and end points and trail their points of interest along the walk. The trails and tracks should be visible to other walkers using the application. Customer wanted the solution to use smart mapping service for web and mobile with effective route planning capabilities.
Encourage healthy living with community connection: There was a need to create the purpose for proactive participation among people. The system needed to be appreciative with a touch of human emotions, such as it should acknowledge people with virtual badge or increase in level when they completed milestones. The system also needed to focus around proliferating mutual bond and community engagement by adding functionalities such as commenting on a walk and sharing a walk.
Should be easy to use: The solution needed to be dynamic with intuitive interface for web and mobile. The users are from different walks of life, different age groups with different technical abilities. The solution needed to be simple yet transformational.
Provision easy searchability for walks: The solution needed the functionality to search for a walk with different parameters such as location, distance, popularity, etc.
Process simplified to achieve healthy milestones
Persistent evaluated several alternatives to devise a solution that could encourage people to integrate walking into their lifestyle. Ultimately, they decided to engineer the robust health app based on Google Maps that helps users discover, create, and share tracks while connecting over the tracks they are mutually interested in. The solution is available on web and mobile. With the solution, customer has been helping communities build and discover exciting maps in their neighbourhoods. The application currently enables users to:
Discover, Create, and share tracks: Users can easily discover walks based on parameters such as location, distance (length of the track), difficulty of walk, sponsored walks, recommended walks, and rating of a walk. Users can also create walks using a simple web interface. The solution allows them to set start and end points, and points of interest along the walk. Walks use the Google directions API to prompt users for the path of the walk. Furthermore, users can share tracks with their friends, colleagues, and neighbors via email, Facebook, Twitter, and distinct URL.
Encourage healthy lifestyle with community engagement: Companionship makes walking more enjoyable. The presence of a walk mate is a quintessential motivator for walkers across various age groups to walk regularly. The solution framework is designed on the principle of healthy living with community engagement. Users can post a walk, comment on a walk, upload pictures for a walk, and appreciate and acknowledge other walkers.
Easy to use: The application is visually modern, aided with help texts which makes it extremely easy to use to allow adoption by a wide audience.
Integrated Metrics: The solution uses Google Analytics for tracking site metrics.
What’s more?
Users can:
- Provide a social destination for walkers to meet,
- Show points of interest for a walk,
- Highlight people’s favorite walks,
- Rate walks, such as – Easy, difficult, children friendly,
- Report Hazards
Walking is one of the least expensive physical activities. It is rarely associated with physical injuries and can be easily taken up by people of all ages including those who are hesitant with adopting any physical activity. The solution caters to the purpose of more people walking every day. The application is already seen as a critical tool to encourage healthy lifestyle with recreation, social connection as well as transport.
