ARTOWN DETROIT was conceived and developed for the Apps for Detroit Challenge presented by Code for America , Devtroit and the City of Detroit . A two-week design and development challenge, the goal of Apps for Detroit is to generate functional applications that serve a civic purpose.
As explained to us, this could mean anything from an app using any technology on any platform - from iOS to HTML5 and from shortwave radio to smoke signals and everything in between - and it should address a challenge in Detroit.
In 13 days, our volunteer team of employees at Entrega Systems Group generated a number of intriguing ideas, narrowed them down, and got to work. We perused the challenges presented by a number of non-profits in Detroit, saw a request for an app that would allow users to find and view art in Detroit. Because there was no central source of this information, we tackled a challenge within a challenge; creating our own database of public art and art galleries to leverage within our application.