This month, Land Securities (a FTSE100 company and the largest construction company in the UK) launched themselves into the world of digital, with their innovative new London Portfolio iPad app, developed by us here at Scribble and our partners Digicave. The launch represents the end of several months of development for Scribble, and a foray into new territory for Land Securities.
The launch attracted the attention of Property Week, a leading trade magazine in the property and construction industry. The app was the focus of an article on digital technology in the construction sector, where Land Securities are noted as being the first in the industry to take this step forward.
Land Securities came to Scribble to create a digital solution that would serve as an internal and business-to-business tool to showcase their extensive construction portfolio. The initial focus for the deployment of the app was their London Portfolio – 12 buildings in central London (including a major development of several buildings in the London Victoria area).
Land Securities wanted to move away from their previous dependence on print-based media for presenting their buildings. But more than just simply creating a digitized version of their print material, Scribble wanted to create a cutting-edge solution that would offer them truly unique possibilities.
Our technology partners Digicave, who specialise in 3D capture and delivery, created and unique platform that showcases the latest technology for app development. As well as this, a business tool was developed enabling Land Securities to deliver a complete solution for their internal team.
The development of the solution involved creating an operating system that would allow the user to navigate through various types of content in an intuitive way. The iPad app opens with a 3D interactive map of central London. From here, the user can see the locations of the various Land Securities sites in context. Tapping on the building’s marker label will load the content for that building. Each building in the app has a selection of images that the user can browse, an interactive 3D map that shows local amenities, travel distances and London Underground tube lines as well as PDF documents and videos related to the project. Each building also has a detailed interactive 3D visualization that allows the main and surrounding buildings to be viewed from any angle – these 3D models had to be painstakingly refined from high end CAD 3D data to optimize them for viewing on the iPad2.
Scribble suggested using the iPad2 as the target device for deployment of the app, because of it’s superior graphics capabilities. The vision for the app, however, is to roll out the solution across multiple platforms. To make this process seamless, the app was developed using Unity3D, a development platform which allows projects to be built for iOS, Android, Mac, PC and for web. This means that technology developed for the app can be easily deployed across other platforms.
Throughout the development, the solution evolved a great deal – and it will continue to grow and evolve with refinements to the interface, content and new additions and technology such as augmented reality.
Land Securities will be showing off the app at the upcoming MIPIM property and real estate conference in Cannes.
MKP6WZSPY5GQ Scribble are happy to announce that our latest app went live this week! The app in question is for up and coming pop superstar Nate Young.
