About the Client

Segue Technologies® developed a free mobile application to support the families, friends, and loved ones of the service men and women, as well as their spouses and children, who are buried at Arlington National Cemetery (ANC). Through personal experience in visiting friends and family members interred at ANC, Segue Executive Vice President Ron Novak saw a need to be able to extend the existing grave location functionality offered by the U.S. Army to mobile devices.

The Challenge

The primary challenge with development of this mobile app was capturing accurate data. Without an existing arrangement with Arlington National Cemetery, Segue initially developed the app as a third-party, taking advantage of the publicly available information from a Department of Veteran's Affairs (VA) website. Our app captured the data from that site and was dependent upon its availability and accuracy. Since initial launch, that site has been taken down, so we redeveloped the ANC app to pull data from an Army database which ultimately provides much more robust and accurate data.

An additional challenge we faced was development of the grave locator as a free download without monetization via ads. We wanted to provide the service without charging for a download or distractions from an ad service.

The Solution

The Segue designed App provides the ability to identify the location of a specific gravesite using first, last and/or middle name as well as dates of birth/death. The application returns a wealth of data, to include the individual's branch of service, birth/death date, interment date, and the section of ANC where the grave is located. The location allows the ANC app to provide walking or driving directions to the site as well, and from the Army database we are able to provide an image of the headstone.

The resultant app allows visitors to query grave locations while on the grounds of the cemetery using a mobile device, instead of relying on a LAN based PC or laptop. This provides immediate information to ANC visitors on grave locations who may not have pre-planned for their visit, or may have decided to visit another site after arriving at the cemetery.

Functionality and design were kept simple and clean to minimize development costs, and focus resources on developing a reliable application for both the iOS and Android.