App landing page |
I downloaded it, and this is my review. The app
is promoted by the ministry of culture, and at the time of this review, it has 3.5
rating on Play Store. C
ould have changed since this writeup.
First, it’s a great idea to have such an app.
There are so many monuments in India dating from a thousand years old! It’s a rich
tapestry of great interest to many tourists, if they know about them and can
reach them, that is. See how European destinations really go to town with marketing
the destinations leveraging apps. India
has a long way to go.
It may not be well known, but the ASI (https://asi.nic.in/) handles a massive number of monuments and continues to handle newer ones found. ASI handles over 3,700 monuments in India, as per September 2023 data, and undertakes overseas work, as was done in Siem Reap, Cambodia on some of the Angkor temples.
App Home Page |
This app has three main parts on the home screen (see screenshots).
First is the “browse monuments”, then “monuments near you (based on allowing
the app to use your location), and third, “upload a new monument”.
The Browse monuments click brings up a
grid of monuments ( 2 per row, and many rows- didn’t count) with picture and
name. Clicking any one of them takes you onto the page for that monument. On
that page are “About”- which has the content about that monument, and two unclickable
links – Gallery and Official Notification. Presumably these will be activated later.
There is a carousel of pictures, though, so don’t know what exactly the “gallery
link” will hold.
But the interesting thing here are the two other
links at the top of each monuments page -Navigate and Locate on Map. Clicking
navigate opens up the device map and delivers a path to reach the monument from
your current location, and the locate on map puts pin on where the monument is,
on a map. Quite interesting and the correct way to do it.
Browse Monuments page |
The third page on the app is upload a new monument,
and clicking it opens a form to fill- monument name and description.
Interestingly, it picks up the GPS co-ordinates from where you are filling the
form, so apparently if ever using this page, fill it at the site of the monument,
or if from some where else, then you need to know the GPS co-ordinates to fill
in (you could get it from Google maps, but cumbersome). But the idea is good. With
such a vast country and chaotic in construction, layout and population density,
ASI would love to harness the populace to find monuments.
The fourth aspect I found good was the form at the end of each monuments page, where they ask for feedback on your visit. Good idea, and if it works, will help ASI work a lot.
Monuments around you |
We don’t know if this app is known much, or is
promoted, and what exactly is its end purpose at this point. If ticketing can
be added to each monument, that would be great. Then it becomes a useful
tourist app; as it stands now, its serves to fulfil a casual curiosity at the
various monuments.
The current version on iOS is 2.7.0.
Clunky Navigation
It certainly is on the right track, as far as
content and concept goes. But the overall app is very clunky, and less
intuitive to use. For example, under the “monuments near you” page, clicking a
red dot does bring up a popup, but the fonts are so small that its no use- you must
click on “more information” link which opens up the full page; but then
navigating back to the map is funny- no back button?
The bottom line
It’s a great app for monuments details and locations.
It’s simple and basic, certainly not slick, - some of the photos on home page
seem stretched out, but a good base to build on. It urgently needs links to working
transport like train schedules, bus routes, or even Uber (which it tries to do
via Uber API on device map). And of course, ticketing. One of India’s bug bears
is the lack of marketing and information on where to get and how much is the
ticketing. This app can be so good for
incredible India – but a long way to go yet.