The Great American Pixel

One Day In Detroit: User-Generated Tour App Beta

Check it out! We just softly rolled the One Day In Detroit beta app onto the open internets. Over the past 6 weeks or so we’ve been working in a fun little collaboration with our friends at Dandelion Detroit and Skidmore Studio to think and design through the possibilities.

Here’s the skinny on where it’s at right now. On the homepage, if you press the circle it pulls up nearby locations that have been featured in tours. More on that in a sec…

Scrolling down we’ve got a section for Featured Tours, which can rotate depending on what’s going on in town and what new awesomeness gets posted (you can, of course, also search for tours and locations, pull up the full list, and sort by different attributes):

Tours are ordered lists of places with descriptions, addresses, imagery, and driving directions:

Every tour also has its own map. There’s also a Places page that shows the locations of all tour stops in one “global” citywide view. This is a screenshot from when you press the circle button on the homepage. It zeros in on you and shows you things that are closest and what tour it came from, if you want to stumble into something while on the go:

Tour creation is mercifully straight forward. Right now you name your tour, describe it, and start posting locations (name, address or cross streets, short descriptions, and a photo).

You can also say how long it probably takes and whether its best to drive, walk, or bike.

We would LOVE to hear your thoughts on this. It definitely scratches an itch, especially in Detroit, a particularly mysterious city. But as always, the devil loves living in the details. One little irritation or counter-intuivity (<— new word) can spoil the whole soup, and there’s a ways to go to nail it.

Hit the LOVELAND team at team@makeloveland.com if and when the spirit moves you, and by all means please try it out, make a little tour, and let us know how it goes. 

I’m going to start posting a tour of the day while talking through some design issues, ideas, observations, questions, what-if’s, etc. Good people, good times.