One app for finding things to do

Travel & Hospitality

About

Explorasaurus is a mobile app based in Ireland that helps people discover things to do near them. Users browse activities, museums, food spots, outdoor places, tours and online options, see them on an interactive map, plan visits in a calendar and chat with other users, all inside one Ionic app instead of several separate ones.

Client Review

Review

As always Shaheryar does an excellent job so quick with the delivery, cannot recommend him enough!

2 data sources

Yelp and Sygic in-app

6 categories

Activities through to online

Map markers

Every place plotted

3 releases

All rated five stars

Calendar planning

Visits planned by date

Challenge

People who wanted things to do had to jump between several apps for activities, food and museums. The founder needed third-party place and activity data inside one app, but Yelp’s API blocks direct calls from a mobile frontend, so the integration had stalled. Without that data the app had little to show users, and the founder also needed to explain every technical step to his own stakeholders.

Solution

We worked through the data integrations one by one and explained each step so the founder could brief his own stakeholders.

Discovery & Strategy

Organized content into activities, museums, food, outdoors, tours and online
Chose a proxy approach to get Yelp data past CORS restrictions
Planned map markers and detail pages for every listing

Design & Engineering

Built the Ionic app with Firebase sign-up and login
Integrated the Yelp Fusion API through a proxy
Integrated the Sygic activities API and adapted the data model
Plotted every place on an interactive map
Improved API call performance and removed unneeded proxy settings

Features

Added calendar planning, detail pages and in-app chat
Built food, museum and activity detail pages with images
Documented the Yelp proxy approach for the founder’s own write-up

The Results

Outcome Summary

Explorasaurus got its data integrations working and a richer app in three fast releases. Users now find activities, food, museums and tours from Yelp and Sygic in one place, see them on a map and plan their visits. The founder called the delivery quick, said we do an excellent job, and kept coming back with new features.