





Eniro
Setting Sail
for a New Harbour
Eniro had developed a Sea Navigation app before Int. started to work with them. It was at first well received by the market, but over time, people lost interest. This is the story of how we made the relaunch of that very app a success — by creating a new business model, the mechanisms that drove it and a streamlined interface for both tablets and mobiles.
Like in many large companies, the first challenge was to sell the project internally. We started out by defining three project opportunities that all levels of the organization could relate to:
New business opportunities
A new way to build the brand
A new way to collect and share data
Mapping tools and apps
To understand both the business landscape and the sea navigation industry we visited several specialist stores doing interviews, as well as meeting the captain of a major ship in Scandinavia. Exisiting Sea Navigation apps were in addition thouroghy mapped, including weather, tide, navigation and education.
Solving the challenges of the previous version
To address the issue of code maintenance we early on decided together with the code team at Eniro to merge the code for the search engine from their “core app” with, with the flexibility of adapting the Sea Navigation design to the frontend of how searches would be performed and presented. As the core app was continuously being updated to work with all legacy systems and new features, we ensured that this app indirectly would always would be maintained.
Code maintainance
To address the issue of code maintenance we early on decided together with the code team at Eniro to merge the code for the search engine from their “core app” with, with the flexibility of adapting the Sea Navigation design to the frontend of how searches would be performed and presented. As the core app was continuously being updated to work with all legacy systems and new features, we ensured that this app indirectly would always would be maintained.
Map licensing costs
The map licensing costs, are set differently for “just viewing sea maps” and for “navigating with the sea maps”, and this defined the two versions of the app: the free version and the pro version, where the costs for the free version would be covered by internal advertising budgets channeled to rather accompany this cost - as well as by income from the pro version, should the sales numbers get high
OS design and screen scalability
The first version of was designed back when Android penetration was close none, and before Apple introduced retina resolution and new aspect ratios to their screens. On top of that the user experience of the apps for the iPad and iPhone was very fragmented. To solve all these challenges at once, we designed a modular and scalable interface that streamlined the experience both between operating systems (while honoring differences such as the hardware back button on Android) and the ever increasing amount of screen resolutions, pixel densities and sizes.
Key features of the new version
Split screens
A killer feature that we even have yet to see in other sea navigation apps.
Man over board
Logging your position. Saving a picture of the position to your picture library just in case. And giving you a button to call for help - while presenting the position data that could save your life.
Light sensitive data view
The light can change fast at sea. And you do not want to go blind by too intese light if you’re using the app by night.
Drop a pin for position weather
Planning a trip and want to know what the weather will be like there? Just drop a pin and you’ll see.
Summing up
The app was a success. Already after two weeks in the AppStore, the app had sold well enough to cover the cost the of all the work we had done on this project for Eniro, and then some.
But most importantly, the project had changed some “defined truths” internally in Eniro of how the company still can change and find new ways to do business.
We have a long list of even more impressive features (that we can’t tell you about yet) saved for the next release, so stay tuned.