Vancouver's CityredBird Location App Puts You On the Map

I had the chance to interview Vancouver-based entrepreneur Kirill Zdornyy who designed a touchscreen city guide, Cityredbird for Vancouver's hotel lobbies. Well, now he has launched his mobile web application and even added special Olympic features for the tourists visiting during the games. In a nutshell, Cityredbird helps tourists and visitors discover the best restaurants, order a taxi, order a limo or just explore the city on a touchscreen hotel lobby display. With automated booking features and staying updated 24-7, expect to see Cityredbird in other cities soon, like NYC and Los Angeles. Here's my interview with Kirill.

Tell us about Cityredbird?

I wanted to create a mobile application that tourists could always rely on to quickly find great restaurants, attractions, and services. It synergizes with our touchscreen application for hotel lobbies to provide a quicker, richer and easier guest service experience. Our current categories on the mobile application are “Tour”, “Rent”, “Dine”, “Shop”, “Limo”, and “Taxi”. Right now we are working a on a special “2010” category designed for tourists who will be visiting this February. This area will list all the “Nation Houses” as well as Olympic Objects. Houses of Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Switzerland, Austria, and Gay Vancouver & Whistler have already publically expressed their gratitude through blogs and Twitter. I have also received responses from Houses of Germany, Korea, Norway, and Italy.

How did you come up with the idea?

The idea for the hotel screens originated in July 2009 at a business lunch between an employee of a local hotel and myself where we were discussing an entirely different project (which actually later served as the basis for the mobile application). As the conversation deviated onto the topic of touchscreens, I was eventually asked whether it would be possible to create a hotel system for “one-touch taxi request”. Three weeks later, and following meetings with Yellow Cab and Samsung, a prototype was ready.

How is it unique in its design? Built to the interior design of the hotel?

Both applications were designed while strictly abiding by “Apple’s UI Design Guidelines”. I have done a lot of research on the areas where similar hotel screen applications had gone wrong and made certain that I would not be making the same mistakes. To date, there have already been two generations of “kiosk” applications, termed by the hotel staff as “dust collectors”: unintuitive, unresponsive, impractical, and generally hideously looking machines. Cityredbird touch display is made to look like it belongs inside the lobby: the thin LCD screen is fitted with a custom metallic frame and is hung directly on the wall to take up as little space as possible.

How did you arrange all the partners involved in this project?

In this particular case, the partners and arrangements all had to come together at the same time. Partnerships with hotels wouldn’t exist without partnerships with service suppliers and vice versa.

Did you use Google translator for the languages?

For the mobile application, as time is limited, and over 500 blocks of text need to be translated, I have considered using Google Translator. I speak 5 languages so that will also help.

What's the cost of this app?

The mobile application is freely available through the web browser, which makes it accessible to a wider variety of smart phones, although it is optimized specifically for the iPhone.

Advice for aspiring iPhone developers?

Move quick, reiterate fast, and be prepared to put in as many hours as it takes to get your application off the ground.