Destination question-and-answer startup LocalUncle is set to release their completed redesigned app in October, and we've got a sneak peak.
The Switzerland-based service, which changed its name last year to resonate more fully with a North American audience, aims to provide the most up-to-date information to travelers about both regions and specific venues - all via a simple question-and-answer interface that promises to "Know the World. In Real-Time."
Similar to text messages, the interface provides a conversational framework to discover what's happening around the world in real-time from people who know. Or as LocalUncle explains:
LocalUncle gives you the ability to know what's happening anywhere in the world, right now. Yes, this is "TELEPORTATION-AS-A-SERVICE" and yes, it's from the future.
Philip from LocalUncle has asked us to emphasize that this is a very early version, and has kindly provided a few preliminary screenshots from the 2.0:
One thing that is immediately apparent is the focus that the LocalUncle team is placing on the user experience.
The current version of the app is simple-verging-on-clunky, without much that encourages users to stick around. This version features only three core areas: Feed, Ask and Profile. Questions can either be viewed in the Feed or Nearby - there's not much else to it.
Version 2.0 will be much more interesting to use, reflecting the conversations that most smartphone users are already having via SMS with their friends.
Users will be able to search questions and see answers on an overview screen, a venue screen and a general area screen. Each venue will have it's own info screen, and all the questions-and-answers will be nested underneath each related place.
Being able to see more information about particular venues and geo-tagged questions should also lend itself to several potential business models that will also increase the utility factor for users seeking more in-depth info about things around them.
Philip from LocalUncle:
After launching and learning from our 1.0, we went back to the drawing board and re-did almost the whole app. Our space is still so new that even bigger companies such as Path and Foursquare have undergone huge re-designs. We are really excited and happy that by mid-October our new LocalUncle iPhone app will be live in the App Store for everybody to try out and use.
We've been working on LocalUncle for over a year now and we've taken all those learnings, the metrics, the usability-studies and the feedback and have built a new, in our opinion, way better version that the one we have now. We're super excited to see this version take off and see how users will actually use it out in the wild
All in all, this looks promising and we'll certainly be keeping an eye out for 2.0.
The current version of LocalUncle is available for the iPhone here at the AppStore, and version 2.0 is set to release in October with an Android version to follow sometime in the near future.