by Vas Mylko, Roman Bilusiak
It’s a second facelift over the latest Curiosio Beta15. We are making the foundation for the fine-tuning of the search & research process. You will be able to fine-tune search requests to create your unique trip plans from scratch. You’ll be able to fine-tune the trip plans of other travelers that you like.
Intro
Curiosio is working like an answering engine. If you have never tried Curiosio then you should know it’s working like googling. You are asking for what you know and want. Seeing the search results. Learning something new. Grasping what the system can do. Asking more narrowly. Repeating until you form a laser-focused request and get you the most valuable trip plan.
Some information only you know. E.g. you want to be at some point on some specific date, you need to stay at some point at least for two days, you decide to drop some cool point (because you visited it a dozen times), you want the more specific and richer daily programme at this point, etc. We call it fine-tuning process. It consists of converging cycles of human-machine interaction.
Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.
— Garry Kasparov
Curiosio + Traveler are smarter together than Curiosio alone or Traveler alone. Curiosio is going to understand eventually your interests, intentions, emotions. But it’s you and only you who possess the unpredictable information, that you can enter into the system, and get much smarter trip plans in your personal context.
Curiosio doesn’t track you, doesn’t store your info, doesn’t ask you for your social profiles. Just do a session with a dozen of searches like googling, starting from what your want and iteratively funneling down to what you need.
Concept
As there are two places where geographical points are present — the textual search form and the map with a route — a click/tap on the same point must lead to the same options. Clicks on point-tags in the search box must open the fine-tuning form. Clicks on the points on the route must open the same fine-tuning form. Below is an initial framework for the fine-tuning options.
The options for the current point are stacked vertically into an accordion interactive list. All options could be closed, only one option could be opened at a time. Should fit into mobile screens well.
Fine-Tuning from the Map
When you click/tap on a point on the route you will trigger the appearance of the balloon with the name of the point and a hamburger menu entry point. Click on the point name will navigate you to the English Wikipedia or Atlas Obscura (or OpenStreetMaps in some countries). Click on the ☰ will open the fine-tuning form.
Clicks/taps on different points on the same route will open the same form, but the available options may vary. We specifically decided to keep all options at the same positions to simplify your ‘autopilot’ when you get used to the app.
Fine-Tuning from the Text
If you know something relevant upfront — go ahead and tell the system about your interests, intentions, commitments on the search form. Click/tap on the point-tags to open the fine-tuning form, and finely tune that point. Repeat for other points if needed.
The form will look the same at the high level but may differ when you open the sections. Some options might be disabled for that specific point in that specific context. Just tune what is needed and what is available.
Next
For now, we only conceptualized the fine-tuning at the level for points (cities, towns, parks). Many options are not implemented yet. They are marked with ‘Not implemented yet’ labels. Design takes time. We spent much more time thinking and groping it than coding it. Most probably we will add some other fine-tuning options. Some options could depend on each other. We will measure the interaction and decide which functions to implement first.
After that, we will kick off the breakthrough version — Curiosio Beta16 — that will allow you to search by anything & everything (by POI names, including POI alternative names). This is going to take two months or so. Then, we will add fine-tuning to the POI level. Multi-country search is not planned for the nearest future. Stay tuned and always follow your curiosity.
