Sverdlovsk Region App for iPad

Первый текст IMC для англоговорящих читателей — в первую очередь, гостей Екатеринбурга. Турист из Манчестера Пол Браун на несколько дней приехал в столицу Урала. Мы попросили его протестировать удобство iPad-приложения о Свердловской области, в котором есть и версия на английском языке.

Knowing I was going to be spending a few days in Ekaterinburg, I found this app (Sverdlovsk Region App for iPad) while looking for ways to try and get a bit of a better overview on what was going on there. There aren’t many to choose from, so «It’s My City» asked me to write a short review of this app.

It seems like a waste of words in some respects, because it`s pretty useless. So my super-short review would read: ignore this — get yourself stuck into http://wikitravel.org/en/Ekaterinburg. On the other hand, if you`re after a few esoteric, business-orientated facts that go beyond what would be included in the usual tourist information, I suppose spending ten minutes with this app won`t do you any harm (unless a bad user interface makes you break out in a cold sweat).

There are six sections in total — Geogrpahical Position, Industry, Investment Appeal, Scientific Potential, Business and Business Infrastructure, Culture and Tourism. Right away, it`s clear that it`s not an app for tourists. That last section seems very much like an afterthought. I think it must be the product of some long-forgotten business conference, trying to get foreign investors to point their money in this direction. Or an ill-conceived effort to get Sverdlovsk ‘online’ without really pausing to work out what that really meant. Perhaps it wasn`t meant to be a standalone app at all and is actually just the visual half of a powerpoint presentation that was never meant to be separated from its narrator.

Anyway. I`m enough of a geek to still be interested in discovering more about the economy and resources of the Sverdlovsk region, so happily clicked through these various areas. The graphics, maps and charts are nice and clear, but the details are thin on the ground and the user interface really is useless. A lot of the time you`ll get a long list of logos of associated services or industries like food companies, filling stations, hotels and museums in the region. However, none of these logos contain any contact information or links, making them more or less pointless. How hard can it be to embed links to take the user to the corresponding company`s website? Even just a link to a google search would make it infinitely more useful as a directory. It`s like the developer never anticipated you might ever want to *do* anything in Sverdlovsk, or perhaps want to delve further into some of the charts on offer. They assumed that you would be happy just passively absorbing a smattering of business facts.

The one useful piece of information I got from this app is that there`s going to be a huge Expo conference in Ekaterinburg in 2020. I`m guessing this means that, by then, somebody somewhere will have realised that some kind of stronger technological presence for a district that`s about as big as my entire country would be really useful in helping strangers discover the delights hidden here.