In 2016, Dubai was undergoing a transformation, with an influx of expats moving for work. During this time, Dubai's nightlife scene saw significant growth. To tap into this, Heineken commissioned Memac Ogilvy to launch a campaign aimed at helping people discover new bars after work. It was during this exciting project that Memac Ogilvy reached out to me to develop the "Open Your City" app for Heineken.

Given the scale of the project, I not only built the iOS app but also hired an Android and backend developer, leading the team to deliver the project end-to-end. The app was successfully launched on the App Store before being decommissioned in 2017 as new competitors entered the market.

I’ll now dive into some of my key engineering contributions to the Open your city app.

Find bars near you

The challenge was to find a cost-effective way to locate nearby bars without relying on expensive APIs like Google Maps or Places. We used CoreLocation to retrieve the user's location and then allowed the user to select a specific experience and set a radius. The location and preferences were sent to a backend via a REST API, which returned a list of relevant venues for the user to explore. The backend used PostgreSQL with PostGIS, enabling low-latency, location-based queries.

Immersive bar discovery UX

The designers at Memac Ogilvy crafted an immersive experience that made it easy for users to navigate between venues. The UX was built using programmatic UIKit, with a UIScrollView containing custom views nested inside a UIPageViewController. I chose UIScrollView for its simplicity, as the venue information wasn’t complex enough to require the optimizations offered by UITableView or UICollectionView. The UIPageViewController provided a smooth and optimized horizontal swipe experience.

The venue page also offered valuable functionality through the REST API, such as the ability to "like" a venue, giving users insight into its popularity. Additionally, the API provided a Google Places ID, enabling deep linking to the Google map's website or app with a single tap.

Drink responsibly with Uber deep link

Heineken has always championed having a great time responsibly. During the development of the "Open Your City" app, I leveraged Uber's public iOS app URL scheme, which offered a simple deep link. This allowed users to be redirected directly to the Uber app or, if not installed, to the App Store for easy download.

If you think I’d be a great fit for your project, please drop me a line at shawnfrank.work@gmail.com