The main goal of the app is to promote physical activity, encourage in-person meetings, and help users establish healthy habits over the 6-week game duration.
TIMELINE: SINCE IX 2020 (ongoing)
COUNTRY: UK
About the project: Beat the Street is a digital innovation developed by Intelligent Health Ltd., a public benefit organization in the United Kingdom, to enhance their existing street games. Participants originally used magnetic cards to collect points, but the app offers a digital alternative, making the games more accessible, interactive, and engaging.
Result in short: The Beat the Street mobile app and web portal simplify participation in street games, enabling users to collect points, track their progress, and connect with others. These tools support an active lifestyle and foster community engagement.
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Intelligent Health Ltd. is a well-established public benefit organisation that organises street games in the United Kingdom.
Their main aim is to activate society and, therefore, take care of their physical condition. The 6-week duration of the games is designed to provide participants with enough time to change routines, adapt to new habits, and sustain them beyond the event.
The app was designed to complement the existing magnetic card system, offering participants a choice between traditional and digital methods. Both options ensure inclusivity and encourage family and group participation. The app supports team-based gameplay by allowing users to join groups and track collective scores.
Additionally, the app fosters face-to-face interactions, strengthening bonds among families, friends, and communities. Beat the Street is designed to be enjoyed in groups, with families, classmates, or other communities coming together to participate.
The system promotes fair play by discouraging driving or public transport to collect points. Instead, activities like walking, cycling, and skateboarding are encouraged. Parents can manage their children’s accounts via the app or optnto use magnetic cards for younger participants to limit screen time.
Another goal was to enhance the game’s reliability and reduce dependence on the custom hardware placed on lampposts for magnetic card interactions, as this hardware was prone to damage or battery depletion.
We developed the Beat the Street app from scratch, transforming the client’s vision into a robust digital platform. Key functionalities include:
Locating checkpoints on a map
Collecting points upon reaching checkpoints
Tracking personal and group scores
Supporting group gameplay and fair competition
While a Beat the Street landing page existed previously, its functionality was limited to displaying collected points. We rebuilt the landing page to create a web user portal mirroring the mobile app’s features, ensuring that users who prefer not to use the app can access the same functionalities, except for the portable checking point.
We had to verify the feasibility of achieving the required precision without excessively draining battery life, as users needed to be able to use the app for hours. This necessitated extensive optimization to ensure compatibility with a wide range of devices, including older models, to avoid excluding any potential participants.
Due to the implementation of multiple localization services for privacy and security, data collection was strictly limited to information essential for the game.
Intelligent Health Ltd. came to us with a clear vision of their objectives, and our role was to transform that vision into a fully functional mobile application.
The project presented a significant challenge in terms of location tracking. Assigning points immediately upon reaching specific destinations required an ultra-precise tracking solution with accuracy within 20-50 meters, which is a technical challenge. To address this challenge, the project began as a proof of concept.
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After verifying the approach and resolving potential issues, we proceeded to build the mobile app based on the designs provided by the client. The app was developed as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to facilitate the gathering of instant and continuous user feedback, allowing us to tailor the app precisely to user needs.
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This approach was also crucial due to the large number of participants in each street game, sometimes reaching tens of thousands. Releasing a buggy app could lead to user frustration and negatively impact the client’s brand, as users are passionate about the games and their point accumulation.
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Therefore, a closed beta testing phase with a limited number of users was conducted for over a year. These users were aware of the app’s limitations and the potential for issues, providing valuable feedback during the improvement and feature addition process.
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The fully featured app was publicly launched in March 2023, and it has been successfully used in numerous street games since then.
The mobile app and web portal provide users with tools to manage accounts, join teams, and track scores. The mobile application allows users to browse a map and search for checkpoints, providing them with the freedom to explore the city at their own pace.
Whenever points are awarded to a user, their associated group also receives points. As children are a significant part of the player base, parents often manage their accounts and add cards if they prefer their children not to use the mobile app.
The app includes a unique competition layer with virtual gems hidden throughout the game area, which users can collect for additional points. These gems are exclusive to the app and motivate participants to explore more while maintaining fairness for non-app users. Each gem carries a specific point value, and these points are tallied separately to maintain fairness for those not using the mobile app.
Participants can collect points via magnetic cards at lamppost devices or by scanning them through a companion’s BTS mobile app using NFC. The system ensures fairness with mechanisms to prevent double-point assignments and detect inappropriate transport methods.
Since the public release, ongoing updates focus on enhancing user experience, addressing feedback, and maintaining compliance with data protection standards.
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