Hi and congratulations on a ground-breaking application. I do feel that the day will soon come when such applications will be quite common and very usefull.
I am not in Finland so cannot experience the app in the mall itself. Pity as I would like to experience the location aspect using WLAN.
I give some personal criticisms below but please do not think that I am just knocking your app. My criticisms are given from my vantage point of not being able to experience the app within the mall itsef, and are given in the interest of honest dialogue aimed at possibly improving the app in cases where you may agree with me.
I do find that the fonts and diagrammes are very small and difficult to read on my pc screen and even more difficult to read on my mobile. Especially the maps themselves. And if you think that usually inside a mall the lighting is sometimes dimmer it may be almost impossible to view the app.
I would have also liked to experience the navigation aspect of the app (i.e. being in the mall and needing to navigate to a particular store) so I cant comment on this aspect. However I am wondering how the app assists with navigation in a multi-level mall. I am sure that it does but the difficulty with navigating in a multi-level mall is showing both the users current location and intended destination on the screen at the same time. Since if we use the usual block diagrames then we need to show two block diagrams on the same page and we cant overlap them since the top one will hide the bottom one.
Does the app somehow assist the shopper with navigation within the mall ?
One aspect concerning navigation is the orientation of the mobile within the mall. If you think about how your cars gps works, the graphic onscreen has to line-up correcly with the road. Then if the car turns a corner the graphic must re-align itself. It is the same within a mall. If we have a map of the mall onscreen then that graphic has to align correctly with the mall otherwise it may be useless. Then if the user turns a corner the graphic must re-align itself. Does the Kamppi app use the WLAN location detection to achieve this ?
Also I see that the app is on a webpage and accessed by the user on their mobile web browser. This may work in countries having good web services but in my country internet connections are often slow and cumbersome and it would take a while to open the map.
I do like the idea that you can scan to see if any friends are in the mall and even text them an invitation to join you.
If you are wondering what qualifies me to make the above comments let me say that I have spent some time now developing a map of a shopping mall for a mobile phone. This doesnt make me an expert but in what I say above I share with you my own experiences in building the app.
My app is completely contained on the mobile and doesnt require any web access although I think some web access can only improve the app with regard to adding certain features.
No my app does not at this stage permit automatic location of the user but I have built the app so that such auto location can easily be added later. I built my app to imitate the gps systems found on motorcars allthough until I can add automatic location detection it will not completely imitate a motorcar gps.Currently it uses a form of manual location detection.
My app allows the user to see both their current location and intended destination on the same graphic which is sharp, large and clear. There are also aspects which help the user to navigate from A to B. It shows all toilets, stores, bank machines, information desks and elevators and escalators.
Keep up the good work and I sincerely hope that you will receive many reviews of your app and eventually have a great working app for indoor navigation.
As for me I am going to investigate ways to add automatic location detection and take it from there.
Paul