#BuiltWithHERE: Navigating the Road Ahead with Precision-MyRoute-app B.V.

#BuiltWithHERE is a series showcasing how developers are using the HERE platform to solve location-related business problems. Each blog post highlights a company who has developed a solution that is timely, innovative, useful, and uses HERE products and/or data. Today, we’ll explore the Dutch company MyRoute-app B.V., whose origins led from motorcycle touring as a hobby, to a robust navigation website suite and cross-platform mobile application for global travelers to record their routes and adventures. This will be the first of a two-part blog post.

Adventurous by nature

Founded in 2014 by Michel van Hagen, MyRoute-app was conceived to make route planning more accessible to “touring” or road-tripping hobbyists.  Essentially, this means the planning of routes as both a form of travel AND a path to adventure. Sometimes people follow specific routes, like famous scenic highways or historic trails, sometimes they prefer the road less traveled. In that way, this type of route-centric hobby is not just about where you end up, it’s about how you got there, what was seen along the way, the whole experience. To quote Michel, “experiencing the adventures of driving either by motorcycle or by car requires not only perseverance but also extensive planning.” 

From that thought came the idea of MyRoute-app and its central vision: One platform for travelers where they can record all their routes, adventures, and experiences in one place. In its entirety, the platform consists of an award-winning route editor, a RouteXpert Library with expert/peer reviewed routes, and an advanced cross-platform (Android & iOS) navigation app (built with the HERE SDK for Flutter) that you can use as a replacement or backup to your current navigation.

A small, but mighty team

We recently caught up with MyRoute-app’s lead developer Corjan Meijerink. Corjan is a staple in our developer Slack community, frequently helping new users by providing insights and tips from his experience working with the HERE SDK and location services. What brought him to the community was what brings many new developers or customers to such a space: looking for guidance, sharing experiences, learning, or just to report an issue. Learning about the company’s goals and challenges set the stage for an innovative journey into this small but mighty team and their route planning world, a world with 350,000 subscribers and climbing!

What problems can the MyRoute-app solve? 

In answering this we will focus strictly on the flutter-based mobile app, but there is also a broad website offering. The company’s core selling points are that the mobile app is the most comprehensive and unique all-in-one product on the market. Catering to a diverse user base with specific routing needs. It’s also the only route planner that leverages multiple service providers. Allowing the user to route depending on their device and subscription status. On mobile devices, it defaults to HERE, but it includes a handful of others. In this competitive landscape of route planning and navigation this app is not about simple A-B navigation. It's about adventuring!

The mobile app has essentially 3 flavors: Installed, installed as a registered user, or a subscribed user. At the basic level, the app offers free functionality without registering. Tasks like tracking routes, adding photos to routes, finding nearby routes, and navigating by following a route line are standard. You can enter addresses, generate a winding route, and navigate bimodally (walking, cycling, and driving) by following the route line. 

If you register for an account, you then gain access to the route planner tool on their website, which allows you to save routes in the cloud and share them. Other registered features include downloading a .gpx route and exporting it to the Garmin Drive app or BMW Connected. The biggest draw is the ability to find expert controlled routes in your area of interest from the MyRoute-app community (more on this later). You can open, download, and export these routes to your favorite app, or navigate for free within the MyRoute-app.

The “top-tier” is the MyRoute-app + MRA Navigation Next, which is subscription-based. This is an extension of the main website, with all online routes, groups, events, track-logs, and other options, combined with a premium navigation module that allows you to drive with extreme accuracy all the winding routes, tours, and personal routes, or skip route points entirely. In addition, you can navigate offline with your mobile OS of choice as it compatible with both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.

Product Evolution: A Journey of Continuous Improvements

It was important to learn how the MyRoute-app team bridged the gap between the realization of the core vision and various challenges faced when designing, developing, and supporting software products along the way to that vision. This is where traditional mobile app development principles come into play, and it follows closely with the evolution of mobile app development.  The MyRoute-app team has a keen understanding of the needs of its user base, and the way they can relate their personal experience and expertise to these demands. After the leap seen with the launch of Apple Store and Google Play, MyRoute evolved to maintain the idea that an apps features should not hassle users but benefit them. In 2018 they developed their first iOS and android apps using the respective HERE SDKs that integrated into the core site functionality with navigation. 

They also established “RouteXperts” to help balance features with usability taking a crowdsourcing approach. RouteXperts is effectively an accreditation program that someone can sign up for to receive route making expertise on the app and platform for the benefit of users. This ensures high quality routes are in their library. Emphasizing expert community contributions to global route planning over quantity. RouteXperts contributes heavily to MyRoute-app's goal of having the largest verified route archive. You can access the route library of user contributions within the app. Most of these are European and include many motorcycling areas in western Europe but routes are growing fast in the US. This is largely an organic effort involving contacting users.

Competition began to drive innovation and by 2021 they overhauled the app to be cross platform using the HERE SDK for Flutter, followed by the navigation app released in 2022. As of today, they are using the 4.x Navigate version of the SDK. 

Fostering Community: Driving feature requests

To ensure customers ideas are represented in the development cycle, the team has established a continuous feedback loop that informs the product roadmap.  This effort is a careful balancing act between offering customization options and maintaining user-friendly navigation tools. Support, outreach and feature requests are integrated and driven through their forum and into a ticketing system which is evaluated. 

As this is a team and community of hobbyists, naturally they want to do everything! In the end, because of this the MyRoute-app has become completely customizable. One major customization is seen with the various data providers available. The MyRoute-app team has engineered the app to facilitate seamless transitions between them. To accomplish this, a server-side conversion is done to various mapping engines, utilizing intermediate waypoints to mitigate discrepancies. This results in an overlaid route calculation derived from the alternate providers.

Building with HERE Technologies

In speaking with Corjan, the decision to use HERE Technologies to build out MyRoute-app came down to a few key elements: support, cost, efficiency, product depth and functionality. Through their local partnership, they can receive the required support along with the HERE developer community. Cost and efficiency comes with that as well. He also spoke to the "one stop solution" for route planners for building on all major navigation devices and mobile OS's. From a depth standpoint, they utilize many of the REST APIs, and can seamlessly facilitate original Garmin customers. HERE Maps API for JS,  Routing, Geocoding & Search, Reverse Geocoding, Tour Planning and Map Image API's are all integrated, to name a few.

From a development standpoint, Corjan spoke to the relatively unique aspect of the Flutter SDK as a foundational piece to align with the company's vision and technical requirements. The ability to build powerful mobile applications for iOS and Android from a single codebase was a gamechanging feature. Bundled with the SDK are many HERE assets and data. The latter comes from the HERE platform as microservices and highly modularized components. Coming from the legacy app using sdk native, they revamped with complete freedom. The result of this is a tightly wrapped integration with a focus on route planning accuracy, reliability, and an app with robust navigation features. 

What's Next?

A lot is in the works over at MyRoute-app! Please stay tuned for the next installment where we will take a deeper dive into the apps development using the HERE SDK for Flutter. In the meantime, you can download the app for free to try on Google Play or Apple App Store under the name MyRoute-app. They also offer a free 14-day trial for the premium option. 

Feel to reach out with any questions or comments on Slack! @heredev