Mobile app case study: From zoo visits to a shared community

In the digital age, the visitor experience at venues like zoos is no longer limited to observation. The desire to capture and share beautiful moments of the animal kingdom is growing, yet there has been a lack of a specialized platform to connect the community of nature lovers.

Recognizing this opportunity, CRETURUP SOCIALFIELD envisioned a unique photo-sharing application, an “Instagram” exclusively for Japanese zoos. They needed a technology partner capable of turning this creative idea into a smooth, engaging, and user-friendly mobile app. The IT Source – a global partner for software development and AI services was selected to carry out this mission.

The vision and challenge: Building a digital community around wildlife

The project began with a clear vision: to create a digital space where visitors could share photos and videos of animals, connect with one another, and enhance their zoo-going experience. However, realizing this vision required overcoming several technical challenges in building the mobile app: 

• User experience: How to create a mobile app that feels as familiar as Instagram but offers unique features tailored to the zoo context?
• Interactivity: Developing photo and video editing tools that are engaging enough to inspire users to create and share content.
• Accuracy and education: The process of identifying and tagging animal species names had to be simple and accurate to enhance the mobile app’s educational value.
• Technical foundation: A robust backend system and secure cloud infrastructure were needed to manage a large volume of user data and multimedia content.

The end-to-end solution from The IT Source

The IT Source approached the CRETURUP SOCIALFIELD project using a Project-Base model, providing an end-to-end development cycle: Development, Testing, and Deployment. Our team, consisting of 2 Developers (Senior + Middle) and 1 Tester, worked closely with the client to deliver the complete mobile app within one year.

Key Features Developed:

• Specialized photo filters (Filter function): Allows users to apply color filters and effects instantly while taking photos, helping to create artistic and vibrant animal pictures.
• Video decoration tools (Decoration function): Integrates editing tools that let users add stickers, text, and other decorative effects to their videos, making each clip unique and personal.
• Simplified species identification system (Simplified naming registration): A core feature that enables users to easily search for and tag the correct names of living beings in their photos/videos, turning each post into a piece of content that is both entertaining and informative.

Technology stack used:

• Flutter: Chosen as the main framework for mobile app development, allowing us to build for both iOS and Android from a single codebase. This saved time and costs while ensuring a consistent user experience across all devices.
• PHP Laravel: Powered the backend system, enabling the creation of secure and efficient APIs to manage user data, posts, and social interactions.
• Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud): The application’s entire infrastructure was deployed in a private virtual cloud environment on Amazon. This ensures security, flexible scalability, and high reliability for the system.

A successful launch of a community-binding application

After a year of development, The IT Source successfully deployed the CRETURUP SOCIALFIELD app, meeting all of the client’s requirements. The application is not just a photo-sharing tool but has become a bridge, creating a vibrant community for animal lovers at Japanese zoos and significantly enhancing visitor experience and engagement.

Is your project about building a mobile app or a niche social network?

Contact The IT Source to discuss how we can help you turn your idea into a successful technology product.