Image: See Marlene Albrecht, Swiss Olympic Athlete 2018 in Curling using the app

Mathieu Menet head of Innovation at Lausanne Public Transport (tl) set us a challenge: develop a mobile application to guide athletes and spectators during the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Lausanne in eight weeks! The app had to ensure a user-friendly experience as well as a high level of quality and reliability. This is what Mathieu Menet says about it.

Mathieu Menet, why an app?

tl is the official carrier of the YOG 2020. We therefore wanted to offer a convenient support to the athletes, spectators and accredited delegates during their travels. A mobile app was needed, in addition to the signage and volunteers on the route leading to the competition venues.

For the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, the transport of the athletes and accredited delegates will be mainly by public transport. The IOC and the Lausanne 2020 Committee want these Winter Youth Olympic Games to be sustainable and innovative. Our approach is part of this vision.

How did you choose the partners for the app Guide Me Yodli?

First of all, we conducted user tests within La Ruche tl – the tl innovation platform – for about six weeks in order to specify the UX, the UI and the backlog.

We needed partners to meet a major challenge: the development and production of the app in less than two months.

Trusted partners who could take the initiative and find solutions quickly needed to be found. That's when we contacted Liip.

The Guide Me Yodli team was thus made up of three players: La Ruche tl (UX, UI, PO), Liip (PO, development) and RouteRANK (development, route generator).

In a retro perspective, how was it?

The development of Guide Me Yodli – which was carried out at a fast pace – encountered some successes, pitfalls and last minute changes.

Working with Liip gave us peace of mind in this extremely tense situation where every bug could cause us to miss the deadline.

Liip's team was able to provide us with solutions to get the app running on time. In addition, we enriched each other, through an exchange of knowledge both in terms of tools and UX/UI.

The application was launched as planned in December 2019 –one month before the start of the YOG on Thursday January 9th, 2020.Download and play around yourself with Guide Me Yodli:

Guide Me Yodli is available on the App Store and on Google Play.