Plenty of tourist benefits on the new Du Card App in Dubrovnik.
Enum Software start-up, founded by Ivan Brčić, Andrej Šarić and Dživo Jelić, students of IT technologies at RIT Croatia, has presented the Du Card, a project for turning Dubrovnik into a "smart city". The project won second place at the Hackathon Dubrovnik 2015 competition, organized by the Dubrovnik Development Agency (DURA) in order to encourage the development of IT start-ups with a goal of enabling self-employment of highly-educated young people, reports Poslovni.hr on December 27, 2015.
The team explains that their project provides for the modernization of existing Dubrovnik tourist card with additional benefits for visitors. They have been working on the mobile app which includes everything from the existing Dubrovnik Card initiative, but also other additional features, such as the use of iBeacon technology.
Their story started at the Hackathon where they made the first prototype of the application in just 48 hours. Guided by the idea that smart phones are increasingly becoming an integral part of our lives, they have decided to use the app to present historical, cultural and gastronomic points of interest of Dubrovnik.
"Du Card app will modernize all the features included with Dubrovnik Card, which allows visitors access to eight cultural points of interest and various discounts in shops and restaurants, along with a free travel guide. With the introduction of our application, guests will no longer need the paper brochure, because they will get all the necessary information on their mobile devices. While walking around the city, visitors will be provided with information about points of interest which are located in their immediate vicinity", the team explains.
The application is available for three mobile platforms, Android, iPhone and Windows Phone. It took them six months to turn their idea into a finished app. During this period, they founded their Enum Software start-up. "At the Hackathon, we had the opportunity to try iBeacon for the first time. Since we all have experience in developing mobile applications, we had no problems using that technology. You do not have to always do something completely new, you should first take advantage of existing opportunities and projects which already work well", Jelić says.
This IT start-up operates within DURA which opened a Smart City Laboratory where teams work on projects similar to this. "We function as a separate company, and our only obligation is preparing reports – comparing our plans with actual results. Therefore, we know the status of each project to the smallest detail which speeds up our work. We know that someone is watching over us, so we can relax and do what you love. Our plan is to update and upgrade the app. After we receive feedback from Dubrovnik, we will present our idea to other tourist cities as well", the team concludes.
