Strava to GPX / StratraX - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Of course, I have an IT degree, and I have been working as a developer for 15 years, but nowadays I work as an IT teacher in a high school and in a university. Three years ago, I wanted to develop an Android app only for pleasure, I watched some videos about Android developing and one month later I published my first app on Google Play.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Our app is a bridge between a lot of other apps. First of all, we had to choose the most used GPS devices and their apps, then we had to develop the integration with our app. Moreover, the GPS market is continuously changing, so we have to add, update, or remove apps according to this market.

_{Jesus Picornell - CEO of GlobalSpark OÜ}

I am an IT teacher and a GPS enthusiast. I bought my first GPS device 20 years ago, I connected it to a PDA (a predecessor of smartphones) and I used them to navigate when driving abroad and to save tracks when hiking or riding. Nowadays, this task is very easy using smartphones and GPS watches. I use them to discover beautiful places following tracks that other people have hiked or cycled before.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

I love Google Maps. I use it a lot when I travel abroad or when I visit someplace in my own country that I don't know.
I also like WhatsApp to share and send information with my colleagues and my family.
And finally, I like Strava, I love trail running and I like to see the places where my friends run or cycle.

How long have you been working on this app?

I have been working for a month on the first version, but I have never stopped developing, adding new features and improving user experience.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

The fact is, I developed the app for myself. I liked some of my friends' activities that I saw on Strava, and I wanted to run or cycle in the same places. There were some tools to download a GPX file (track or route) from these activities, but you have to do some steps with a computer, then send the file to your smartphone and finally to your GPS devices. I wanted to simplify these steps.

I showed this app to my friends, they liked it, so I decided to upload it to Google Play. Two years and a half later, the app has almost 200,000 downloads.

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

I think that our app is easy to use and it has more features than similar apps. Users don't like or don't know how to copy and paste an URL, search a file in the Download folder, open another app after the first one.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

We are developing a feature for users to upload and save their loved GPX files (tracks or routes) on our server. Nowadays users only can access their own GPS files, but in the future, they could share with other app users.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

There are a lot of GPS brands with their own apps; of course they develop new features. Obviously, we can't test all of them. Please, if you, as a user, have a new idea, and if think that a feature could be better, feel free to send us a message to [email protected] or contact us from our website globalspark.net and we will be glad to improve our app with your help.