A mobile guide to discover Madeira Island’s Levadas and walking trails
Walking app
Everything started with a passion for Walking along the Levadas of Madeira Island, our homeland. We joint our passion with our technical skills inf software engineer and we made the first mobile guide to discover the natural wonders of the Island, by walking. The idea emerged in the last year of our Master in Software Engineer at University of Madeira, in a course with free theme project. We worked the theory along the course and after finishing the master, we made it real and developed the app.
Today, WalkMe app is the unique app with all the information updated about levadas and walking trails of Madeira Island and it’s a reference for tourists and locals, being in the first place of the mais distribution channels. It has around 100 thousand downloads.
Other apps
We also developed a few other apps just for fun [and to make money, of course] such as news apps, fitness, tourism and more. Then, started working with national and international companies making custom apps in several fields.
Mobile Games
Then, we discoverd the amazing world of MOBILE GAMING! Today this is our focus: we develop incredible Quiz and Words games for the world!
The walking app is actually about 6 years (since 2012) and it has been updated along the time.
Today, it has around 100 thousand downloads and it’s complemented with a website www.walkmeguide.com and an e-Book with all the information needed to discover the natural wonders of Madeira Island.
Resources needed
The initial investment was around 18 thousand euros for equipment and human resources, got from an specific program from the employment institute of Madeira for supporting new jpbs and entrepeneurship. Regularly we have to invest in new equipments such as mobile devices, new computers and licenses.
Evidence of success
The evolution of our activity (first with a local app with high potential to be expanded to another territories and now games for the whole world) allows an economic growing, creating new jobs with 100% regional talent.
Jobs created:
At the beginning of the project: 3
Now: 6
We export about 95% of what we produce.
Difficulties encountered
Being the first in the area of mobile development in Madeira Island in 2012, it was very difficult for us to get how the financial and legal areas was implemented.
Potential for learning or transfer
As said before, the walking app was already expanded to other national territories and it can be easily adapted to any other country with walking trails.
Regarding the games, since they’re general knowledge there is always a great potential to expand to another countries, languages and cultures.
Also, the gamification concept can be adapted to specific areas for dynimizing the knowledge. For example, we developed a game adapted to a Police academy of Spain to help the students that wanted to become part of the municipal police to pass in the theory tests.
Tags: SME, Learning