Melbourne Royal Show

Before 2024, show visitors used printed paper maps and event schedules to find out where things were and to find their way around the event venue. This has many disadvantages, such as the lead time required for printing maps and the inability to update maps in response to schedule changes or to correct errors. Paper maps also fail to meet current expectations of mapping and navigation given the ubiquitous availability of dynamic mapping on mobile devices which have Google or Apple Maps built in.

Event visitors reasonably expect to be able to search and categorise events and places on the show map on their phones, and to have “blue dot” navigation available while at the event venue. They also expect navigation or wayfinding, showing them the shortest walking route from where they are to any selected point of interest on the map.

Wayfinding during the event is complicated by event specific access restrictions, such as the temporary boundary fence with entry and exit gates, show infrastructure such as carnival rides and animal enclosures blocking normal access routes, and sections of the venue being closed off to the public during the show.

The Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria and the event have a strong brand and style guide, and the map will need to conform and fit in with all their other digital publications. This, along with the temporary event specific features of the show, means that default Google and Apple maps cannot be used on their own.

Some of the data to be displayed on the dynamic map is controlled by 3rd parties. The event guide (What’s On) and the carnival ride information are available via APIs, but a lot of the other important points of interest such as food and drink vendors, entrance and exit gates, ATMs, and facilities such as toilets and first aid stations do not have an existing system or database to manage them.

Mapiddiction solves most of the problems out of the box, and the APIs for the What’s On and Rides data can be implemented as a plugin for Mapiddiction easily. Sense were able provide API documentation and endpoints for the APIs available, and where necessary have those APIs modified or extended to provide accurate GPS locations.

Sense already has a design team familiar with the brand and style guides and who worked on the show website. They could design the image of the map, with assistance and specific requirements from Mobiddiction’s mapping specialists.

The wayfinding and walking directions can be calculated by Mapiddiction’s wayfinding module, based on an accurate “walkable area” map provided by Sense and their on-ground staff.

Using a custom map image overlaid on an html/javascript powered GoogleMap would allow us to show a strongly branded map of the event venue, while delivering all the normal geolocation features of a GoogleMap. Using Mapiddiction’s POIs and Labels allows us to draw marker icons and text that automatically resizes as the map is zoomed in and out. The Wayfinding Module lets us deliver event specific walking routes, allowing show visitors to select an event or other point of interest by searching or tapping on screen, and then they can be shown the shortest route to walk to get there from their current location.

Our specialist mapping team at Mobiddiction worked with Sense’s designers to create a branded map image suitable to overlay on a Google Map with the style and colours required by the brand guidelines.

To use this as a pan and zoomable “slippy map”, where you can slide the map around with your fingers on your phone screen, there are some specialised requirements that people who normannly design maps for printing might not be aware of.

Mobiddiction collaborated with Sense’s designers to ensure the following dynamic map constraints were met:

• Sufficient size/resolution so it doesn’t look to pixellated when zoomed right in.
• A file format with transparency to allow the underlying Google Map to show through around the edges of the irregular shape of the venue map.
• A small enough file size to download and cache reasonably. This is a compromise between items 1 & 2 above, and suitable dimensions and compression to keep the file size small.
• Leaving off all text and icons, so they won’t become huge or tiny as the map is zoomed in and out. These will be dynamically overlaid later via the Mapiddiction Platform, so the sizes of text and icons remain readable and consistent across zoom levels.

Sense’s designers also created suitable icons for important event specific POIs. Mapiddictions icon library was used for common items like ATMs, toilets, and first aid stations.

A large part of the work to deliver the map was configuration within Mapiddiction. Once the map image in suitable size and format was created by Sense’s designers collaborating with Mobiddictions map team, it was uploaded to Mapiddiction and calibrated (to ensure that places on the image lined up accurately to the underlying GoogleMap and real GPS coordinates). All the places of interest (POIs) that were not coming from 3rd party APIs were added in appropriate categories as POIs in Mapiddiction, along with uploading or selecting the required icons. This POI database was made available to Sense staff to edit and update as and when required.