Bristol Zoo

The Challenge

If you live in Bristol, it is highly likely that you will have seen the wonderfully colourful gorillas that have been placed all around the city in July! With Bristol Zoo Gardens celebrating its 175th anniversary this year, Wow! Gorillas aims to increase awareness, raise money for charity and bring local people together. Local artists have decorated life-size gorillas which have been sponsored by local businesses and placed around the city until 7 September. This was a rather different project for us as it was one that we initiated. The Mubaloo Android team were looking into Augmented Reality, and with frequent viewings of the Wow! Gorillas all across Bristol they thought how great it would be to look at Augmented Reality in this context, whilst showing our support for such a good cause. So Scott, Richard, Chris, Andy and Shashank developed this app for Wow! Gorillas. The app has been designed and developed specifically for Android smartphones with the aim of raising awareness of Wow! Gorillas by helping people find and share photos of them.

Our Solution

The five main functions of the app are: View gorillas locations on Google map - click the icons to view gorilla info including extended artist description. View gorillas locations in augmented reality (AR), integrating with the free WikiTude application which is separate download. When you are within 100 metres of a Wow! Gorilla the app enables you to mark the gorilla as ’spotted.' When all 60 have been 'spotted' you will receive a special code giving half price entry to the Zoo. Capture photo of gorilla and upload to free photo sharing server Twitpic - each image is tagged with the gorilla's name. View gallery of photos of each gorilla taken by other users of the application. You can also share uploaded photos via other installed apps such as Facebook, Google+ and/or email etc.

Conclusion

This app is fun, social and useful and everyone internally has had great fun developing it! We are thrilled that Bristol Zoo are so pleased with their Android App and hope it achieves the initial aim of raising awareness of Wow! Gorillas. Mubaloo have donated this app free of charge to Bristol Zoo. The app is now free to download from the Android Marketplace.

Client Testimonial

We worked with Mubaloo to develop the ‘Wow! Gorillas’ app. Through proactivity, creativity and excellent knowledge, they developed an innovative and customer friendly app which captured the essence of our project. Paul Pritchard, Marketing Coordinator, Bristol Zoo Gardens.