Training an App to Know When You Are Riding a Bus (post written on behalf of our client, PIPs Rewards)

PIPs Rewards is a mobile platform that utilizes data-driven solutions to prompt and reward a range of beneficial behaviors from walking and bike-sharing to recycling and shopping. The app’s north star is to prompt these behaviors using games and rewards and to verify them using smart technology, rather than self-reporting. When an action is verified, this triggers a reward in the form of a currency of good, called Positive Impact Points (or PIPs). PIPs can be redeemed for gift cards or converted into scholarships by college students.

Over the last year, we’ve been testing data scie

Book Summary

In this seminal book, published in 2017, sociologist Shoshana Zuboff analyses in depth the impact that the new data-hungry technology companies have had on our lives in the past 20 years. From the emergence of Google in 1999, under the favorable conjunction of the dotcom bubble, shareholder pressure and pushback on government regulation, the OG surveillance capitalists were able to create a model that makes of us all simply instruments in the advertising value creation model. Beyond that, they are creating a world based on the extraction imperative (all data can and should be collected), that molds our behavior (the prediction imperative - the more certain our behavior, the better it is for advertisers) from a perspective of radical indifference to u

Should your data strategy be a separate initiative from your digital strategy? Why is data so important? Large companies now have 'CDOs' who can be either a Chief Digital Officer or a Chief Data Officer - this is how important data has become for businesses everywhere, and the merging of these two titles illustrates how interrelated the two subjects are. 

At Destination Digital, data is an everyday subject, and we wanted to offer some insights into why we constantly think about it in parallel to our thinking about digital strategy.

Knowing your users

As I stated in a previous article, the first step to building a digital strategy is knowing your users, where they consume your products, on which media, using which features, etc. All of thi

2020 has been a landmark year in terms of digital transformation, as many businesses were forced to go partially or fully online in a matter of weeks starting mid March. For those of you who are in the process of working on making your business more digital, we at Destination Digital wanted to give you a view on how we approach the building of a digital transformation strategy.

Why do I need to digitally transform?

Digital transformation is now a strategic question for every business, but that doesn't preclude from starting by answering the question: Why? Why are we going more digital? Is it to increase sales? To foster better customer engagement? To reassure our investors? To reposition our brand? To attract younger talent? Answering this question helps d

In September 2012, Apple launched iOS6 with its usual fanfare, and one of the key innovations Apple fans were so excited about was the announcement that this version of the famed OS included a new Apple Maps app, fresh off the internal press from Apple, including 3D Maps as a world premiere. Within days of the launch however, the Apple Maps app was a bust, with major issues in translation of famous locations (Berlin, for example, now called ‘Shoeneiche'), clunky search results (searching for ‘London' in the UK resulted in 'London, Ontario, Canada') and unacceptable visual glitches in map data in a number of countries (especially the 3D map data). Launching a product in over 100 countries at once is a huge undertaking of course, but the executives who declared the app ready f

I am often asked by clients who are looking to develop a mobile app, and more specifically by their engineering leads: should we go with a hybrid app?

First of all, what is a hybrid mobile app? It is a mobile app that has been developed with one code base to work on the 2 key mobile platforms dominating the app space today: iOS and Android. At a very high level, going hybrid allows for one single development over both platforms, therefore saving both time and resources. Non hybrid however – or native development, as in developing apps that use the native code for each platform, Java on Android and Swift/C++ on iOS – allows for closer integration into the device OS and easier integration of native user experience frameworks (never under-estimate the impact of a good UX

I love the start of the new year, with its host of articles on trends and future-facing views – a time to step back, collect ourselves and take a big picture look at the year ahead. More specifically, in-stadium and event tech, the trend is moving towards more immersive and social experiences, in order to compete with the comfort and ease of simply watching the event at home from your couch. Here is my take on some of the key technology trends that will impact stadiums and event venues this year:

• 5G: ok, but when?

There has been major buzz around 5G mobile network technology over the past few months, with the first physical rollouts initiated by Verizon and AT&T in Q4 2018. The first 5G-compatible phones (iPhones and other smartphone