Project Overview
The Hot Type team officially added mobile development to its portfolio when Chase built myFault at his day job with the Center for Investigative Reporting.
The application, which was launched to accompany a series by California Watch that examined gaping holes in seismically safe construction in California’s schools, effectively serves as a handheld seismic hazard detector.
Its central feature is a map that allows Californians to look up seismic hazards near them, including faults, landslide zone and liquefaction zones. The app also explains in detail what those hazards mean and what concerned Californians can do to protect themselves.
Other features include an earthquake preparedness checklist and even an LED-enabled flashlight for use in emergencies.
Michael Corey, one of our frequent collaborators here at Hot Type, handled design work for the icons and the flashlight.
The application is built in Objective-C using the iPhone SDK. The API that feeds the mapping application is built in Django and hosted on heavily indexed, load-balanced database servers to ensure performance under load.
