Sunday, June 22, 2014

Wishlist for Untappd Badges and Features

I'm a sucker for achievements/badges/pointless recognition for non critical things like video games and apps like Untappd.  And while it feels like you can't have three beers without triggering a new badge, there's some items that I think deserve a badge.

Also, like everything ever invented, more features are better.  Of course, features cost money to develop, take memory, and generally make things less reliable.  But don't worry, we'll be drinking, so that will probably help slow us down too.

Here are some of my ideas...

Badges:

  • Beer Mixer - Everyone knows that Guinness mixes really well with other drinks, well except bartenders in England who gave me a perplexed look like I was committing a cardinal sin.  So why not celebrate mixing your beers together.  In honor of Saint Patrick's Day, I had a Smithwicks and Guinness, also known as Blacksmith but didn't know how to add it.  So I ordered another and individually added Smithwicks and Guinness.
  • Badges for Red Ales, Browns, and Double IPAs.  These are styles of beers that I seem to consume a lot of and are sadly badge-less.  I know Double IPAs get counted like IPAs, but maybe they should get their own category.  Some others I drink less frequently that could use new homes are Dubbels, Tripels, barrel aged stouts, and imperial stouts.
  • Beer Tour - If you hit three or more breweries in a day or night.
  • Beer Festival - If you're drinking beer at a local, national, or international beer festival/competition.  A lot of big festivals show up as special badges but smaller ones don't.

Features:

  • An specific area to note the size of the drink you've consumed in ounces.  There's times where an ounce of something is amazing but 12 might not be as great.
  • A place to go back and make comments the next day.  Every now and then, I enjoy a beer and then wake up feeling like dirt (and I'm blaming the beer).  I'd like to easily note that maybe that bomber of double IPA wasn't something to be taken down solo.  And yes, I forget which beer has ruined my next morning before doing it a second time.
  • A rough BAC calculator that will sum what's been inputted, your gender, and your weight.  While this can only roughly approximate your level of intoxication, it adds some weight behind someone saying telling their friends that they're fine, when the math says they shouldn't be driving.  I  imagine a feature like this would probably take two years to implement and that's just to get lawyers to agree on the indemnification wording for the time the math said someone was fine and they still got a DUI or got into an accident.
  • Friendly reminders to drink water.  Amazing how often we forget to do something so basic once we've had a few beers.  Now that I think about this, this line item might be why I've had some rough mornings after a beer or two.
  • A Barcode/QR code scanner that allows a user to scan a beer bottle/can and it automatically pulls it up.
  • Remove the level cap.  Why stop at 10?  I want my IPAs, like Spinal Taps' amps, to go to 11.  Or 20.
On the whole, Untappd is a great app.  If you're a beer fan and you're not using it, pick it up.  If you're already using it; umm, good job!  Hooray for beer apps!

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