Barcelona: Monday, February 15, 2010 – The Mobile Premier Awards (MPA) today announced that the Best Start Up in User Experience Award, sponsored by MEX, has gone to flook, the location browser.

Selected from a group of 115 award entries in this category, Flook received the award from Marek Pawlowski, Founder, and Norbert Metzner, Research Director, of MEX, during the ceremony today at the Petit Palau de la Musica in Barcelona, in front of an audience of investors, operators, media companies, entrepreneur peers, press and influential bloggers.

“Investing in truly user-centred design is essential for a successful mobile service and goes far beyond creating a pretty UI for your app,” commented Marek Pawlowski, founder of MEX. “Flook has embedded great user experience in the heart of its product through clever interaction flow, interesting visual metaphors, customer involvement and attention to detail. It is a deserving winner of this Award and a great example for other start-ups to invest in user experience from an early stage.”

Flook stated: “Jane Sales who designed the flook user experience can’t be here tonight but she would be thrilled to have won the Mobile Premier Award for User Experience today. It is good to see that this panel is not swayed by ‘augmented reality’ and desired a deeper experience than ‘check in games’. Ambient Industries acknowledges Pete Borlace (our artist) and Nick Healey (who helped in the design process).”

“This year’s competition was the largest ever with over 600 start up submissions from all continents” added Rudy De Waele, CNO at dotopen. “flook is a great representative of the new generation of innovative startups. At dotopen, we remain committed to enabling early stage startups with their growth and ecosystem development.”

Other Mobile Premier Awards categories included:

• MPA in Innovation – The best grassroots startup innovation chosen by their peers in partnership with MobileMonday
• MPA in Entertainment – The best startup in Mobile Entertainment in partnership with Mobile Entertainment Forum
• MPA in User Experience – The best startup in Mobile User Experience in partnership with MEX.
• MPA in Social Change – The best startup using mobile for social change in partnership with MobileActive.org
• MPA in Female Entrepreneurship – The best woman-lead mobile startup in partnership with Women 2.0 and the Women in Mobile Data Association

Ambient Industries is a privately held software company based in the U.K. and San Francisco. The company was created in 2008 by four partners with vast industry experience, including former Symbian co-founders, senior members of Psion and Yahoo!. Its first product flook (http://flook.it), is an award-winning location browser with social navigation and networking features. Released in late 2009, flook became a staff pick in the iPhone Applications store on January 25th, 2010.

The company is funded by Amadeus Capital Partners and Eden Ventures. For more information, visit www.ambientindustries.com.

About MEX

MEX is the strategy forum for mobile user experience. We help companies in the mobile industry to see the world through their customers’ eyes with our twice yearly MEX conference, weekly newsletter and bespoke consulting services. Established in 1995, we are experts in understanding the reality of customer behaviour in the mobile environment and translating that knowledge into actionable business intelligence. Find out more at http://pmn.co.uk/mex/ and on our blog at http://mobileuserexperience.com

About dotopen

dotopen is the organizer of the Mobile Premier Awards, the largest global competition in mobile startup innovation as well as the enabling partner in startup and innovation competitions around the world. dotopen.com is the open platform for organizations, where, as a decision maker, you can showcase your company, discover relevant partners and build your ecosystem.