Visit San Juan de Gaztelugatxe with a custom made audio guide

Given the high demand in the tourist sector of Gaztelugatxe, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia proposed to develop, with the help of ZYLK, an "audio guide" that will help visitors to discover the area in a different and more entertaining way. By using the audio application, users will be able to visit Gaztelugatxe and get to know its most emblematic points, in a more immersive experience.

This PWA (Progressive Web Apps) was created to be used by people from different countries and that is why it was designed in 5 languages, which an. The audio guide, besides offering points of interest and audios with associated information, is also available for both mobile and desktop.

This application was designed under Liferay DXP as a content manager, allowing the use of its REST API and the consumption of the portal contents from the React application, created by ZYLK, which will be in charge of the development of interfaces and business logic.

It was decided to develop it with React, since a dynamic, multiplatform application was required that would allow the use of a PWA's technology.

As explained in other articles, progressive applications are essentially web applications, but through certain devices called Service Workers, they behave like native mobile apps. Thus, on mobile devices it is possible to install them as one more application, and use the device's resources.

PWAs are a natural evolution of web applications, and they blur more and more the barrier between the web and native mobile applications, being able to perform tasks that generally only native apps could do.

One of the most important goals for this application was to give users the possibility to use it even when they are offline. In order for the application to work, even without being content to a network, the PWA must save the structure and contents in the browser. To achieve this, firstly, IndexedDB, a transactional database system is used to save the content and secondly, cookies are used to save the structure.

Additionally, the application has two versions with different contents, one for adults and another for children. As an extra feature, users will have available the choice of two different routes in the tourist area.

Audioguide application of San Juan de Gaztelugatxe (Provincial Government of Bizkaia)

•     Public PWA audio guide application for Gaztelugatxe
•     Points of interest and audios with associated information
•     Multi-language.
•     Children's and adult's version.
•     Frontend in React JS.
•     Offline operation.
•     Desktop and mobile version.

During the year 2020 we have published two applications for the Provincial Government of Bizkaia.

• Bizkaitik Mugitu: A hybrid, simple and intuitive application that allows, based on the location of the users' device, to calculate the best public transport route between two points using the Google Maps API.
• Audio guide Gaztelugatxe: A hybrid audio guide application for a tourist route with features for offline navigation.