Company History Yomp was originally started as PleaseCycle, an online portal and supporting smart phone app aimed at getting more people cycling more often. Created at a time when the prominence of cycling was growing in the public eye and perception of cycling as a viable commuting option was more widely accepted.
It was a unique combination of game theory, behavioural change science and reward platform delivered through technology. Since the birth of PleaseCycle the system has grown and changed to focus on activity as well as sustainable travel appealing to a wider demographic and encouraging people to be more active whatever their focus. Since the initial creation of the system it has been refined and we have created a number of extrinsic and intrinsic motivators to further promote behavioural change as well as 'gamifying' the platform.
‘Gamifying’ and rewarding sustainable travel and physically active behaviour Gamification is applying the mechanics of gaming to non-game activities to change people’s behaviour. We have applied the concept to influence users to become more active and to think about their travel options.
By placing users into ‘leaderboards’ we allow them to ‘compete’ to save the most carbon, change their levels of activity, adopt more active behaviour through sustainable travel, burn the most calories, complete the most activities etc. ‘Players’ can win prizes for changing their behaviour. Clients often use prizes as a means to encourage more people to get involved and look to increase levels of activity becoming healthier and more productive in the process. Active sustainable travel is a great way to do this.
Additional Behaviour Change Additional behavioural change is achieved through each form of activity from Yoga to running, Swimming to rowing earning ‘Stravel Points’ – like the Air Miles of physical activity – which users can ‘spend’ to receive discounts and free items from commercial partners. To further focus on sustainable travel the 'points' can be weighted to favour commuting journeys and certain methods of travel. This reward mechanism is also able to add a philanthropic angle to the Stravel platform. Where corporate clients have an existing affiliation with a charity, users are able to select a charitable donation rather than a typical reward which then ties in to corporate charity schemes.
Our Demographic Our user base is broad appealing to both men and women (55/45 split) young and old (16-65+). The recent addition of activities beyond sustainable travel is to ensure the widest possible reach appealing to all whatever activity they want to take part in.
Key Features There are many features of the system we are very proud of but some that have received the most praise from our audiences are the badges earned through logging journeys. These are earned when certain milestones are reached such as a stabilisers badge when a user records their first cycle journey or the century badge when a user covers 100miles. We are also very proud of the ability we have provided corporate clients to promote charity affiliations and fund raising - utilising the rewards platform to facilitate charity donations based on miles travelled sustainably.
We are also proud of our systems infographics. These are living documents which give real time stats based on the activity of individuals using the system. It converts the stats that each system generates
Integration with the OpenXC Platform The OpenXC platform provides an interesting opportunity to link with the Stravel app. As the Stravel Hub allows car-share journeys to be entered into the system it could be adapted to facilitate more accurate recording of car-share journeys. This could allow more users to sign up as it would allow commuters who have distances to travel too great for cycling, walking or running. It is also currently very hard to prove car-sharing has taken place and enabling data to feed into the Stravel app and allow the Stravel app to communicate with the OpenXC system would mean that individuals would become accountable (and earn reward points) for journeys undertaken when car-sharing.
Built With
- android
- bootstrap-javascript
- google-analytics
- google-maps
- iomart-hosting
- java-ios
- jquery
- objective-c-css
- php
- silex-nginx
- xcode
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.