Indoor positioning and wayfinding mobile apps became part of our daily lives over a decade ago when people adopted mobile apps as a preferred platform for everyday computing. As consumer and commercial expectations evolve, three emerging trends are shaping wayfinding solutions:
- Touchless experiences are growing, complementing traditional mobile interfaces.
- Organizations are focusing on delivering personalized omni-channel experiences to better track users physically and digitally.
- As mobile platforms become increasingly fragmented, standardizing experiences consistent across different devices and form factors becomes more challenging.
Personal Wayfinder SDK version 3.1 – the latest release of our indoor positioning SDK – narrows the platform differences between Android and iOS, so our customers have the same powerful indoor mapping resources across the board. This release makes it easier for engineers and developers to configure and maintain their Personal Wayfinder SDK integration while significantly enhancing the indoor navigation experience for our customers and their end-users.
New in Version 3.1
New Map Rendering Engine
The new map rendering engine loads faster with smoother map interactivity, scrolling, and 3D effects. Developers also have greater control of the map presentation and interactivity, including smoother and more fluid zoom, pan, rotation interactions.
New Customizable Elements
The new UI and map rendering engines both offer greater breadth in customization of colors, custom icons, fonts, and more. For example, developers can highlight any facility feature using custom markers, specifically identifying entrances and exits, events, or item locations as users move through specific venue areas. Users can tap these markers for additional information.
Additionally, I18N map labels match the map language to the default language configured in the end user’s device.
3D Isometric Maps
Users can tilt their devices, displaying maps in 3D isometric views. Additionally, extruded places and amenities offer a more contextual experience while exploring a venue and make important landmarks easier to identify.
Dynamic Level of Detail and Collision Detection
Too much data on the map can be overwhelming and confusing. Personal Wayfinder SDK 3.1 offers a new dynamic level of detail control with collision detection to ensure a clean view of relevant information at every zoom level.
Versatile Location Data
Passing positioning data into the Personal Wayfinder SDK 3.1 is easier than ever because your team can enable a blue dot as a configurable vessel for location data. They have the flexibility to determine exactly when, where, and how to draw that blue dot. Do you want to use GPS, the native Personal Navigator, IndoorAtlas, or Pointr Version 3.1 can receive data from all of these or a fused location where you choose the best available data from all sources.
Improved POI Highlighting and Desaturation
Dense venues like airport concourses present multiple points of interest (POI). Unique markers, highlighting, desaturation, and minimizing features new to version 3.1 call attention to context-critical data and reduce the prominence of less relevant information. As a result, the better visual contrast and reduced noise on the map help users focus on the most pertinent information generated during POI taps, search results, and navigation activity.
Dark Mode and Theming
Full support for dark mode ensures your users can experience venue maps comfortably in any lighting environment. Developers can set dark/light programmatically, allow the device OS to dictate it, or use the default setting.
Fuzzy Search
Map users are usually on the move and operating their device with one hand. The new fuzzy search logic for POI names, categories, and tags (visible and hidden) means fewer typo corrections to get accurate suggestions on their first search.
Real-Time Updates
Version 3.1 can update automatically in the background to ensure users have consistent access to the latest maps instead of only upon launching the app. Now users receive real-time notifications then, with a single tap, their map updates and reloads seamlessly.
Enhanced Engagement Analytics for Deep Visitor Insights
The overhauled analytics implementation in version 3.1 enables use cases that require analytics to support fundamental business processes. Enhanced analytics capabilities reveal richer insights and more accurate detail regarding end-user behavior. Enhanced capabilities include:
- Enriched analytics instrumentation
- Consistent event capture across all Personal Wayfinder products
- User actions enriched with location data
- Custom events and data
Managers and facility teams can capture high-value map user data with the same triggers and payload across iOS, Android, and web, with events logged uniformly across the platforms. Finally, if the end-user closes the application or goes offline, the data transmit the next time they connect.
Platform-Specific Updates
iOS
- Supports Xcode 12.5
- XCFramework format supported in Cocoapods
Android
- Rewritten in Kotlin so utilizing Coroutines can improve performance
- Repackaged as Fragment to conform to Android conventions
JavaScript
- New Deep Linking Parameters
- Access to Custom Marker options
What’s Next
The release of Personal Wayfinder SDK 3.1 marks the beginning of all Atrius SDKs converging into a unified, ultra-powerful set of indoor positioning and wayfinding resources for engineers, developers, and their users.
As we continue to invest and drive innovation in the indoor mapping space, we look forward to sharing more of our capabilities.
Sign up below to receive exciting new updates to Personal Wayfinder SDK and the complete Atrius® Personal Experiences Suite!
