Expo 2020 Dubai was the first world Expo held in the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia region. The organizers' great ambitions and bold vision, combined with years of dedicated effort, yielded impressive results.
The event attracted nearly 25 million visits over six months. Within its three themes: opportunity, mobility, and sustainability, 192 countries showcased their own pavilions, presenting the highest standards of creativity, design and innovation.
When the event concluded, its valuable legacy was entrusted to Expo City Dubai. The organization set out to maximize the potential of the 438-hectare area between Dubai and Abu Dhabi, already brimming with state-of-the-art infrastructure and advanced technological solutions. Their ambitious goal is to create a smart city of the future, designed to be an ideal place to live and a thriving hub for business and innovation.
The visionary project is being meticulously crafted to align with the Dubai 2040 Urban Master Plan, a cornerstone of national strategy for the United Arab Emirates. This forward-thinking initiative lays out a comprehensive blueprint for sustainable urban development, aimed at enhancing happiness and quality of life for citizens, residents and visitors, while positioning Dubai as a leading global destination over the next 20 years.
As part of this mission, Expo City Dubai decided to create a multi-feature mobile app to:
At the same time, this solution is intended to become the backbone of a super-app – a platform consolidating many other modules that create an entire ecosystem of digital services for diverse users.
Due to these complex and far-reaching plans, the organization sought a reliable IT partner that could provide more than just high-quality code and digital products. They needed a partner that would act as a tech consultant, recommending the most suitable solutions and taking responsibility for their implementation. Our open yet analytical approach and ability to challenge assumptions for business profitability were crucial.
There are two types of teams: "Pleasers" who try to satisfy clients at any cost, and “Realistic teams” who prioritize the project's success and challenge clients when necessary. You belonged to the latter group, providing honest feedback and solutions
Rashid Mohammed, Chief Technology Officer, Expo City Dubai
Furthermore, the experience in building complex mobile apps, such as for Six Flags, the world's largest regional theme park company, significantly influenced Expo City Dubai’s decision to choose Merixstudio and start collaborating with us.
the maximum user load capacity
key integrations
our internal team satisfaction metric score
NPS score from the client
Our work on the Expo City Dubai mobile app was driven by the need for a flexible yet comprehensive approach to discovery and analysis, blending rapid initial development with deeper, phased explorations. The project began with a scoping recon session that outlined organizational understanding and expectations, accelerating the start of work. This was followed later by an extensive three-day workshop to delve deeper into the requirements and present our initial recommendations and solutions.
In addition to addressing the main features, we conducted separate scoping sessions to analyze the concepts for subsequent application modules. Furthermore, throughout the project, we engaged in ongoing discovery to ensure continuous identification of needs and verification of assumptions.
Given the emphasis on human-centricity within the client’s smart city concept, ensuring the usability of the digital product was paramount. In a complex super-app like this, a major challenge is preventing feature creep. Our strategy involved prioritizing essential functionalities, assessing both user and business value, and carefully considering their implementation costs and timelines. This approach not only streamlined development but also ensured that the MVP remained practical and scalable without burdening future maintenance and usability.
Recognizing the international diversity of potential users (visitors as well as business tenants and residents), we designed the app to be culturally intuitive and scalable across multiple languages, including support for right-to-left scripts. Additionally, the app is being developed with the aim of meeting WCAG standards for accessibility and highlighting facilities within Expo City Dubai that are available to individuals with disabilities.
From a technical standpoint, we advocated for and implemented scalable solutions to support further development and integration into Expo Dubai’s future smart city ecosystem. We chose a cross-platform development approach using Flutter, which allows us to maintain a single codebase for rapid development and cost-effective maintenance, along with extensive UI customization options. For the backend, we selected Python, supported by the OpenSearch, Pydantic and Starlette, ensuring a lightweight, flexible structure capable of easy modification.
Thanks to the implemented and efficiently configured AWS services, we ensured the system's autoscalability. High performance was a key requirement for the application, especially given the significant, temporary spikes in traffic, such as during exhibitions and events. The app was designed with the stability to support up to 400,000 simultaneous users. To verify its functionality under such conditions, we conducted load tests using the K6 library.
A key feature of the app is the integrated Mapbox-based map, which includes built-in navigation and allows for extensive customization. Some elements required native development due to the limitations of the available packages in Flutter. Our team's diverse experience in both cross-platform and dedicated iOS and Android solutions proved invaluable, enabling us to meet the client's expectations.
The app also integrates seamlessly with the client's headless CMS, Contentful. Our efforts in this part ensured a unified data environment, facilitating consistent content management across the application while accommodating customization needs. Additionally, the mobile super app communicates with the client’s CRM system, Microsoft Dynamics.
Our commitment to high-quality coding was affirmed by a detailed audit conducted by the client's security team, and, at the request of Expo City Dubai, we also underwent a sustainability assessment by Ecovadis.
The project's success was driven by our multidisciplinary team of senior-level specialists, who adapted flexibly to evolving roles and responsibilities. Thanks to their mature approach, we efficiently managed dynamic changes in the backlog also harnessing a blend of agile methods, under the guidance of an experienced PM. This PM also ensured continuous and effective communication with the client and collaborated with a broad array of stakeholders within a complex corporate structure.
Our efforts in building a robust product and fostering a trust-based partnership with the client were reflected in a perfect Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 10/10, leading to additional projects commissioned by Expo City Dubai.
Our internal team satisfaction metrics echoed this success, consistently scoring around 4.5/5. The mutual satisfaction from our collaboration has opened up the prospect of continued joint efforts on this and other projects dedicated to developing a sustainable smart city for the future.
key functionality based on Mapbox technology showcasing the vast plethora of infrastructure and attractions of Expo City Dubai including restaurants, events, parks, etc.
all the information needed for a seamless and memorable trip to Expo City Dubai in one place.
push notifications about upcoming events
a feature that facilitates personalized search by considering criteria such as cuisine type or users’ interests.
the user can review a list of recommended parking options for particular points of interest (POI).
