Mobile Grand Prix

GOOGLE DUBAI, UAE, ‘Qibla Finder’, Google

THE IDEA

Millions of muslims around the world turn to Mecca every day for prayer. One of the top questions on Google, particularly during Ramadan is “What’s the direction of the Qibla?”, which is the direction Muslims turn to at prayer time. Users often look for a website or an app to point them in the right direction but the experience is suboptimal and inaccurate. To answer their question, Google wanted to create an innovative and accessible way of showing users the way to Qibla. Therefore, they launched Qibla Finder, a web app that uses augmented reality and Google Maps technology to showed the direction to Qibla wherever you are in the world on your mobile device. Through the Qibla Finder, Google demonstrated local relevance to millions of users active on this moment and connected Muslims with shared interests across the globe with Google products.

The sheer usefulness of this idea made us love this work. We all have apps that end up on page 5 of the home screen of our mobile but this Grand Prix will stay on page 1. Mobile Jury President Alan Kelly, Executive Creative Director, Rothco Accenture Interactive