How Walkbox ignites Portuguese wanderlust for vacationers and locals

Heading image showing the Walkbox app icon on the left and three iPhones on the right, showing the app in action.

  <p class="large"><em>With hundreds of thousands of holiday makers every year, it’s no secret that Portugal’s acquired heaps to supply — together with sunny seashores, Port wine, and loads of breathtaking historic landmarks. However with out an insider by your aspect, it’s simple to search out your self in precisely the identical place as each different vacationer. That’s what Bernardo Henriques and his crew are right here to alter with Walkbox: an app that gives self-guided strolling excursions throughout the nation, so you possibly can expertise the magic of Portugal to the fullest — whether or not you’re new on the town otherwise you’ve been residing there for ages.</em></p>

We spoke to Bernardo to study extra about Walkbox, how the concept for it took place, and why he’s a giant fan of utilizing Sketch to convey his imaginative and prescient to life. And if the journey bug bites you whereas studying this story, don’t fear — he additionally shared his suggestions for must-see sights in Portugal. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!


How would you describe Walkbox?

Walkbox is a cell app that adjustments the best way we uncover unbelievable locations in cities and the outside. The app gives self-guided strolling excursions that assist native, nationwide, and overseas guests join with the essence of locations and expertise Portugal’s tradition and sweetness in a fascinating and sustainable manner.

With nationwide protection and a neighborhood focus, Walkbox gives an immersive and distinctive go to expertise by means of an intuitive person interface, devoted easy-to-use maps, fastidiously ready itineraries with an unprecedented stage of element, unique texts and pictures, and distance-triggered audio guides.

You may select from greater than 100 strolling excursions protecting over 1,200 km of routes and a pair of,500 factors of curiosity, together with cultural excursions, thematic excursions, photographic guides, nature walks, mountain hikes, and multi-stage grand routes. And it’s out there on each iOS and Android, and operates 100% offline!

An image of a couple using the Walkbox app for a tour of Santo Estevão Belvedere
Walkbox permits you to take self-guided strolling excursions of Portugal — together with cultural excursions, thematic excursions, photographic guides, nature walks, mountain hikes, and multi-stage grand routes.

How did the concept for Walkbox come about?

I’ve been an adventure-travel and tradition fanatic all my life. Lately, I began noticing that tourism data was more and more unfold out, turning into extra superficial, and targeted solely on the most well-liked touristic websites. We created Walkbox to alter this paradigm.

Earlier than you’ve picked your tour, it really works as a single portal within the palm of your hand for inspiration and planning. When you choose your tour, Walkbox navigates you seamlessly to the start of the route by automobile, public transport, or on foot, after which guides you interactively throughout your discovery.

Tourism data was more and more unfold out, turning into extra superficial, and targeted solely on the most well-liked touristic websites. We created Walkbox to alter this paradigm.

Inform us just a little about why you selected Sketch because the instrument in your app’s design.

From day one, we targeted on creating an awesome person interface. And graphic design is essential to that. We wished to merge the design with app programming processes to acquire probably the most inventive and streamlined design method.

It turned out that our app programmers are concurrently our graphic designers! And this was solely made attainable with Sketch. We researched varied design instruments intimately, together with these most designers use, and we discovered Sketch to be probably the most ample instrument for the job for its user-friendliness, ultra-short studying curve, and value.

We researched varied design instruments intimately, together with these most designers use, and we discovered Sketch to be probably the most ample instrument for the job for its user-friendliness, ultra-short studying curve, and value.

Does your crew have any favourite options or ideas for designing in Sketch?

Sketch has many nice options. A few of our favorites embody:

It’s particularly simple to design app mockups — in reality, all 5 app display screen mockups highlighted on this article have been produced in simply six minutes — in addition to lovely app playing cards and flyers to distribute by means of tourism workplaces and to our resort companions.

An image of a flyer promoting the Walkbox app for tourists interested in discovering Portugal.
The crew at Walkbox used Sketch to create print supplies too — together with playing cards and flyers for tourism workplaces and resort companions.

Are you able to level out any particular elements of Walkbox’s design that you just’re notably pleased with?

The UI of Walkbox has gotten plenty of reward. We design the UX in Sketch first, utilizing some templates we created earlier than we proceed with the coding on Android and iOS.

Sketch is nice for UX design. It’s very visible and environment friendly to compose every Walkbox display screen in Sketch and choose every font sort, weight, dimension, and shade — ensuring all particulars are in place to greatest information the person.

Needless to say individuals use Walkbox on the go, whereas strolling, so the UI must be simple to understand. We design our personal map icons on the fly, every time we now have a brand new sort of focal point. We’re additionally pleased with the advertising supplies we produced in Sketch, akin to Walkbox playing cards to distribute to our resort companions and Walkbox flyers for tourism workplaces.

Sketch is nice for UX design. It’s very visible and environment friendly to compose every Walkbox display screen in Sketch.

What concerns do you must make while you design an app that helps vacationers?

We created Walkbox with locals in thoughts. We actually wished to make a distinction in comparison with different apps for individuals residing within the cities and areas we cowl. And if a spot is fascinating for locals, it will likely be appreciated by vacationers who’re in search of extra genuine experiences.

For instance, you possibly can see the extent of granularity within the Porto Necessities strolling tour. It comprises 78 factors of curiosity, and we go into researching and protecting tales and legends of neighborhoods and streets, related statues and historic buildings, and historic cafes and retailers — to call a couple of.

Once you go previous a avenue artwork mural, for instance, you’ll get a textual content popup on the map and the audio information will mechanically play and describe the story behind the mural. Relying on the sight, it’ll additionally point out a quote from the writer, the writer’s identify, their house metropolis, and navigate to his or her Instagram account. All this helps locals uncover new locations of their cities and areas, and study extra about their very own tradition.

An image showing three screenshots of the Walkbox app, featuring its walking tours in Porto.
The Porto Necessities strolling tour covers 78 factors of curiosity within the metropolis.

What are the design challenges that include making a strolling excursions app that works 100% offline?

We have now labored onerous in varied areas to make Walkbox an ultra-fast app that works 100% offline. Firstly, you could have a database that’s quick and scalable, and that doesn’t want community assets.

Secondly, we custom-design all maps you see on Walkbox to supply a singular and simple mapping expertise, and, then again, to optimize map information as a lot as attainable. And that’s key for providing environment friendly offline maps which you can obtain shortly and with out overloading your telephone.

Lastly, we use particular photograph compression algorithms and have carried out an environment friendly mechanism to obtain pictures from our cloud photograph database on the go as they’re displayed and retailer them on the telephone reminiscence for offline viewing, with ongoing information administration system.

Might you see Walkbox increasing to extra nations?

We’re targeted on Portugal proper now with a proposal 108 strolling excursions and we are going to proceed increasing our protection throughout 2023, probably to over 150 strolling excursions. Sooner or later, we now have concepts to increase in Europe, and probably South and North America by means of native partnerships.

An image showing two screenshots of the Walkbox app, featuring its walking tours in Porto.
”We’re targeted on Portugal proper now with a proposal 108 strolling excursions and we are going to proceed increasing our protection throughout 2023”

How has Walkbox impacted your individual relationship with tourism in Portugal? Have you ever found extra concerning the nation your self?

My crew and I am going out each week strolling in cities and outside taking a look at the whole lot we discover fascinating with a curious eye after which sharing it by way of Walkbox with our person neighborhood. So, I’m undoubtedly studying extra day by day about my nation and, as one person mentioned, about
myself too!

And we do plenty of analysis. We have now written effectively over 500,000 phrases about greater than 2,500 factors of curiosity across the nation — and it’s rising day by day. So, this enormously deepens our (and the person’s) data about our tradition and historical past in addition to our pure variety, together with geology.

To wrap up, what are some must-see sights for first-time guests? And are there any spots you assume locals ought to know extra about?

One factor wonderful about Portugal is the cultural, panorama, and local weather variety you expertise for akin to small nation. For locals, we advocate visiting Cascais with a curious eye. This small and exquisite city has a lot to supply underneath the radar — our Cascais Necessities strolling tour covers 97 factors of curiosity.

For first-time guests spending about one week in Portugal, I might advocate visiting Lisbon for 2 to a few days — that features a day journey to Sintra (a 30-minute drive from Lisbon) and Cascais (20 minutes from Sintra), and one other day journey to Évora (about an hour and half from Lisbon). I’d additionally advocate a two-day journey to Porto, which is about three hours from Lisbon, and I’d cease in Coimbra on the best way up North. And also you’d have varied decisions of self-guided strolling excursions on Walkbox for every of those locations!


Walkbox is obtainable on iOS and Android. You can too observe them on Instagram and Fb for extra journey content material on Portugal.

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