LIstory – A look behind the scenes of app development

To mark the 300th anniversary of the Principality of Liechtenstein, Bitforge developed an experience app in collaboration with Liechteinstein Marketing that brings the most important milestones from three centuries of Liechtenstein’s history to life using state-of-the-art technology.

The challenge was to make the newly created Liechtenstein Trail a multi-dimensional experience for visitors and to grant exclusive access to closed rooms such as Vaduz Castle. Furthermore, visitors were to be guided to all 11 municipalities in the country and thus get to know the country in all its depth.

Instead of presenting facts along the hiking trail in the form of text panels, the app offers experiences that stick and allow visitors to interact with historical figures. The augmented reality elements make historical sites and customs much more tangible and thus offer real added value. This was one of the most important points in the app programming.

In terms of both navigation and data procurement, a strong focus was placed on the map material during app development. LIstory makes use of established smartphone gestures, for which great importance was attached to intuitive application and correctness as well as fluidity of use.

The design of the maps used was completely geared towards the “hiker” target group. They come in a topographical design and do without irrelevant information and overloaded subpages – the latter in particular was a major challenge given the incredible amount of content.

The overall design of the app is very much based on the Liechtenstein flag, with the three colors used for the thematic assignment:

• Blue summarizes all experience stations
• Red categorizes all route elements
• Yellow (gold) stands for the crown – the gamification badges

From a design perspective, it is also essential to create a uniform look and feel on iOS and Android. This was achieved by using the Material Design framework.

The LIstory app is part of a year-round campaign to mark the 300th anniversary of the Principality of Liechtenstein. “With the experiences of yesterday, we are setting off together into the future” is the guiding principle that runs through the anniversary year and in the context of which a variety of measures are being implemented.

This is not least about communicating Liechtenstein’s history in a contemporary and experience-oriented way. From this point of view, the “LIstory” app can also be integrated into the overall context.

The app has been downloaded around 7,500 times so far (as at the beginning of September 2019) and continues to play a major role in marketing the tourism region even after the anniversary celebrations have ended.

Pictures of the opening of the Liechtenstein Trail and the associated app launch:

A combination of Unity and web technologies (vue.js) was used in the development. This was because although Unity is a good offering tool for the creation of 3D content, it is not well suited to the content and UI requirements of the LIstory app. A customized CMS was also created to provide the content.

What also makes LIstory special is the fact that a large part of the app (without AR content) can also be viewed and used as a progressive web app.

LIstory did not simply create content for content containers – on the contrary. The app concept and ultimately the Liechtenstein Way emerged from the app content.

The app is available in German and English and is characterized by an extraordinary depth of content. The Liechtenstein Institute spent around one and a half years developing the entire historical content, which consists of around 300 A4 pages of text material, over 1,000 images, numerous 360° images and high-quality historical videos and audio files. Countless museums, institutions and private archives were combed through and collaborated with renowned historians.

The central focus of the app development was the app’s AR content. This can be divided into interaction points, storytellers and a “master builder”.

• Interaction Points are 3D models of castles that are not actually accessible to the public and can be experienced using 360° videos
• Storytellers are AR stories that are told by historical figures and with whom you can interact to better understand the historical reality of life.
• In Baumeister, every user can build their own castle from predefined elements – and place it wherever they want using AR.

The biggest challenge was creating the 3D models of the historical sites. Because a simple rendering of drone images led to unsightly results and files that were far too large for app purposes, these were recreated in Blender in tedious manual work and in collaboration with historians.

An equally big challenge was the creation and animation of the figures for the storyteller elements, particularly due to the Uncanny Valley problem. Achieving an appropriate file size was also crucial for the characters created from a mixture of Adobe Fuse and Mixamo and animated with Blendshapes for speaking.

LIstory was awarded one gold, two silver and one bronze medal at the Best of Swiss Apps Awards and also won silver in the master vote for best Swiss app of the year 2019!