Brief: Design, build, develop, and publish to iOS and Android mobile tablets and phones, an app for Westfield’s Design and Construction Department. Detailing the latest news and developments across the corporation. The app content contained sensitive company information and required ‘entitlement signing’ to ensure different levels of access for board members, internal dept. staff and key stakeholders.

The content and access to the CMS needed to be managed by the client moving forward.

The app’s visual design needed to fit within the brand landscape of the Westfield corporation.

Response: After establishing and agreeing on the initial requirements and goals of the app, GPD worked closely with Westfield to develop the visual identity of the user Interface – ensuring it was on brand, coherent and intuitive to use. As the content management was going to be served by Westfield themselves rolling forward, the final design was required to also be editable within the dept.

GPD built a ‘development app’ for review and feedback, employed and integrated a content authoring tool (Canvas Flow) with an article-based publishing platform (Twixl) and produced the app’s visual assets from Westfields ‘raw’ image files. Ensuring the app developed organically with the client’s understanding of the platform’s potential as the content was incorporated.

Integration and evaluation of the ‘entitlements’ facility was a crucial aspect of the app due to the nature of the sensitive company information held within. Reassuring the client by enabling the testing of this facility on the ‘development app’ ensured ‘buy-in’ from all the critical stakeholders in the project.

Result: Finally publishing to iTunes and Google Play. The app was now available for download globally to their workforce and stakeholders – with secure access to content only enabled to those with the correct ‘entitlement’ credentials and managed by the client moving forward.

Delivering to Westfield an extremely versatile and flexible communications tool to engage, align and deliver their department messaging internally to their workforce and externally to entitled vital stakeholders.

With a full suite of Google, Apple and Twixl analytics – a complete and comprehensive picture of the app’s usage could be built and evaluated. It was then utilised in both message and app development.