Edugames in Iceland: Q&A with Locatify

Hi Locatify! Can you tell the edugameshub readers a bit about your company? When were you formed? What sorts of things do you do? How many people are you?

Locatify is a privately held Icelandic company founded in 2009. It provides a platform for customers in the educational, event-organizing and tourism industries to publish their own guided tours, treasure hunt games and e-books for smartphones and tablets. Locatify’s goal is to provide an easy to use platform for children and grown-ups to publish their own content for smart devices.

Steinunn Anna Gunnlaugsdottir from Locatify with one of their location-based apps

The company was initially funded by public grants from Rannis, Nordic Games, Nora and Nordplus, where a network of partners was established. In 2011, Locatify won at the European Satellite Navigation Competition for the Scandinavian countries.  This year Locatify began selling licenses to customers, to use the platform to make their own content and publish in interactive apps.

The business model has been proven very successful, and the company is ready to scale up its operations. The team has background from gaming, educational environment, marketing and publishing industries. The core team consists of 5 people; web-designer, programmers, graphic artist and marketing executive, all committed to deliver and market solutions for publishing interactive content and games for mobile devices.

You are based in Iceland. What can you tell us about the edtech scene in Iceland? Is there one? Do you feel like part of a Scandinavian sector or are you a more global company?

There are great companies in Iceland working in the edtech scene like Skema, which focuses on teaching children how to program and teachers how to teach children to program. InfoMentor is doing great things as well and Plain Vanilla has done well with QuizUp.

Most of our clients are in Scandinavia but we are working with companies in Germany, Belgium and Great Britain as well. One of our oldest client is StrollOn in London, but as our focus is on creating platforms we consider us to be a global company. It does not matter where our customers are located in order for them to use our products.

Tell us a bit about TurfHunt, your treasure hunt app. What inspired you to make it? How has it been doing?

TurfHunt is a location-based game which gives smartphone users the opportunity to play competitive treasure hunts. The games, which use GPS, 3G, and maps, are designed as real-time, competitive treasure hunts to be played in teams or solo. They involve problem solving and exploration activities, finding treasures, and playing mini-games. Players get instructions through their smartphone when they reach specific GPS points, where they need to answer questions or solve challenges and are rewarded with virtual gold or other rewards.

Locatify’s Turf Hunt app

The game is aimed at different groups: adults, children, students, tourists, companies or just anyone who wants to have fun and maybe learn something at the same time. A game like this is a great tool to educate about history, culture, nature or the geology of the place where it is played. But it can also be used to promote services, team building or outdoor activity. On Locatify Observation, website games in progress can be monitored so teachers can see where the students are located and how many scores they have gotten.

One of our main focuses when developing the game was to create an innovative educational tool for active learning. Students learn the most when they are not in their regular routine. We have also set our focus on making the creation tools simple so anyone can use them. In some schools the students themselves are creating games for other students and are doing well,  we all know when we are teaching someone, we learn the most.

Turf Hunt has been doing very well. The system is still open for everyone to try out; we have not started to require payments for single use of it yet, so if someone likes to test it out further they are welcome to do so. Most of the schools that have signed up for the use of it are in Norway. It is also being used in schools in Sweden, Iceland, Greenland and Estonia.  We got a great video sent from Lemhaga in Sweden where they used a TurfHunt game for 150 students in downtown Stockholm.

You went to Greenland recently to do a workshop on TurfHunt. How did that go? Do you find these kinds of personalised workshops with your audience are an important part of your sales strategy?

It was inspiring to go to Greenland; the students are optimistic and were eager to learn about new technology which they can use in tourism, even though the internet is very expensive and not easy to use there because of limitations. Students showed great patience and enthusiasm while learning about TurfHunt. The headmaster and the staff at Niuernermik Ilinniarfik Qaqortoq were excellent in finding solutions.

Many were relieved when they found out that the TurfHunt app can be used without internet connection when it has been downloaded. It was a great experience to travel to Greenland to create a game and teach these students that have a clear vision of Greenland’s future.

Norwegian students using a Locatify app

It is great to get to know the people who are using the system but these occasions are rare. This workshop was supported by North Atlantic Tourism Association (NATA) along with courses in Faroe Islands.

What’s your strategy for the future? Do you think things will get easier or harder for app developers? Do you see a strong future for location-based technologies?

Our strategy is to build easy to use tools which can be used both by amateurs and professionals to create their own content and to have an efficient way to white-label customers’ apps.

We will continue developing and improving the TurfHunt and SmartGuide apps, we want to be a number one choice for those who are interested in creating and using interactive treasure hunt games and guides. We set our aims high in marketing our products.

Our newest product, Interactive Books for Children, will be opened up for Beta in January 2014. The purpose of the project is to improve traditional learning methods of reading and learning new languages by integrating modern technologies and illustrated children’s books.

We foresee a bright future for app developers. We believe location-based technology will continue to have a strong influence of how we perceive our environment. It is an efficient way and in fact the best way to learn about nature while you are out in the nature. When we started our business in 2009 we wrote down: “Around 5% of tourists in Iceland own smartphones and we assume their size will double in the next year.” Now the whole environment has changed, there are around 10% that do not own smartphones and we expect to get location-based app everywhere we go.