Newcastle App
City showcase app for visitors and residents.
Overview.
The Newcastle App, launched in June 2019, is a digital guidebook and resource to the beaches, nightlife, events
and community resources of the fine city of Newcastle, Australia.
UX and UI
Mobile Apps
Admin Console
For visitors and residents.
The app developed for the City of Newcastle aimed to provide users with a guide to the city that went further
than the regular top 10 destinations promoted through tourism channels.
The app includes a detailed listing of food, drink and accommodation venues as well as community resources, such
as pools, libraries, parks and local governmet facilities. By drawing on data sources from businesses, council
and augmented with clever direct management tools, the app was able to build a diverse and deep directory of
places.
Along with events and guides, the app also includes commonly used forms for residents to report issues to
council, such as fallen trees and waste collection problems.
Making data beautiful.
The brief for the Newcastle App did not just set out a range of features to tick off, the expectation was that
the app would reflect the dynamism, creativity and renewal of Newcastle as it transformed from an industrial
town, to a new knowledge-based service economy.
A large amount of effort was put into the visual design of the app and ensuring that the implementation of the
app always considered the user experience. As the reality of the structure and vagaries of the data become
known, the design was continually revisited and adapted, to re-order or recategorise content as needed.
We worked closely with the City of Newcastle to adapt the app to their needs, with custom design and development
put towards a major events section and an ongoing 'night time' view highlighting businesses and events that keep
Newcastle going after dark.
A digital city.
Over the past 10 years, a core team at the City of Newcastle, backed by a far-sighted council, have striven to
bring a range of digital innovations into the fabric of the city. The Newcastle App fits into that long-term
strategy, and also benefits from much of the ground work undertaken in recent years.
Upcoming features for the Newcastle App will include live displays of the occupancy of individual parking spaces
at all beach car parks, along with charts showing the busiest times of the week for the current season. Another
feature will surface micro-weather data from 6 weather stations installed throughout the suburbs.
We Make Apps remains the close partner of the team at the City of Newcastle to this day.
