Expo City Dubai

The Cross-cultural mobile app that revives the Expo Dubai and makes the experience more enjoyable.

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Project background

The goal of this app is to create a smart city of the future, designed to be an ideal place to live and a thriving hub for business and innovation.

Expo 2020 Dubai was the first world Expo held in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region. The organizers' great ambitions and bold vision, combined with years of dedicated effort, yielded impressive results.

The event attracted nearly 25 million visits over six months. Within its three themes: opportunity, mobility, and sustainability, 192 countries showcased their own pavilions, presenting the highest standards of creativity, design and innovation.

When the event concluded, Expo City Dubai was entrusted with its valuable legacy. The organization set out to maximize the potential of the 438-hectare area between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, which was already brimming with state-of-the-art infrastructure and advanced technological solutions.

The visionary project is being meticulously crafted to align with the Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan, a cornerstone of national strategy for the United Arab Emirates. This forward-thinking initiative lays out a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable urban development to enhance happiness and quality of life for citizens, residents, and visitors while positioning Dubai as a leading global destination over the next 20 years.

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As part of this mission, Expo City Dubai decided to create a multi-feature mobile app to:

- enhance the experience for visitors worldwide and the local community,

- facilitate navigation within the Expo City area to allow users to explore numerous attractions,

- notify users about multiple events in the city, recommending the most relevant ones.

At the same time, this solution is intended to become the backbone of a super-app – a platform consolidating many other modules that create an entire ecosystem of digital services for diverse users.

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Challenges faced

dynamic changes in the backlog

collaboration with a broad array of stakeholders within a complex corporate structure.

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Project execution process

Our work on the Expo City Dubai mobile app was driven by the need for a flexible yet comprehensive approach to discovery and analysis, blending rapid initial development with deeper, phased explorations. Throughout the project, we engaged in ongoing discovery to ensure continuous identification of needs and verification of assumptions.

Given the emphasis on human-centricity within the client’s smart city concept, ensuring the usability of the digital product was paramount. In a complex app like this, a major challenge is preventing feature creep. Our strategy involved prioritizing essential functionalities, assessing both user and business value, and carefully considering their implementation costs and timelines. This approach not only streamlined development but also ensured that the MVP remained practical and scalable without burdening future maintenance and usability.

Recognizing the international diversity of potential users (visitors as well as business tenants and residents), we designed the app to be culturally intuitive and scalable across multiple languages, including support for right-to-left scripts. Additionally, the app is being developed with the aim of meeting WCAG standards for accessibility and highlighting facilities within Expo City Dubai that are available to individuals with disabilities.

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Tools and frameworks used

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Agile

- On-going product discovery (multiple workshops, scopings, and ideation sessions)

- Business Analysis

- Figma prototypes

- Usability testing

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Multidisciplinary team

The whole ream responsible for the success of the product

Project results and achievements

We created an MVP scalable application, that could be continuously developed to meet the stakeholder's vision. The app was launched recently and  is available in app stores

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Lessons learned

- Better understanding of the Arabic culture

- Better understanding of the impact of the Dubai climate on the clients/users needs

- Smooth cooperation with multiple stakeholders

- Iteration in design process" This is a complex, multi-purpose project that considered a wide range of functions, cultural differences, and a unique user experience.  This work is already available to the public, proving its purpose.

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This is a complex, multi-purpose project that considered a wide range of functions, cultural differences, and a unique user experience.  This work is already available to the public, proving its purpose.