I was wondering when someone would ask that question @pieterpaul!
We only decided on the name very late into the development, as we usually do for our apps.
We tried a number of naming strategies, and we came up with a lot of corny ones (like BlackCurrent).
Then I proposed Cuckoo. The thinking behind it was that abbreviating CUrrency COnverter gives me Cuco.
That led both of us to start thinking of animals. Animals that do some sort of conversion or travel. Of course we couldn't find any animals that do conversion, so we ended up with migratory animals.
Elk was single syllable, and sounded catchy to us.
I also like the fact that when looking at an Elk head on, the symmetry of the antlers resemble our iPhone app, where we have a left/right split converting one currency to another.
Awesome, I've tried a bunch of these and none of the others handle big number currencies like IDR particularly well - the swipe multiplier is good.
A notification widget so I needn't unlock to check rates would be icing on the cake (currently using Currency Today for that).
Thanks for the hunt @dylan36032!
The story behind Elk started in October last year when I travelled to Hong Kong with a group of friends.
I would stare at prices for a long time while my brain attempts a mental conversion ("HK$78 divided by 5.5…"), or I'd dig into my pocket for my phone, unlock it, launch an app… you get the idea. It was just awkward.
A day after I came back home, I drew up the first sketch of what I envisioned a traveller's currency converter should be. It should be:
1. easily accessible (no digging around pockets…),
2. superfast (knowing how much HK$140 cost is good enough. I don't need to know how much HK$138.50 costs),
3. discrete (I feel like a cheapo to hold up a queue while trying to punch in numbers to convert currencies),
4. and well, pretty.
It took us five months and many iterations to get to where we are. We've tested Elk on a number of our personal trips so far (including Norway, Hong Kong and Philippines), and we think we've finally nailed it—the currency converter made just for travellers.
We hope you'd find it as useful as we do!
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Perfect example of something that already exists, but improving it a lot by looking at the use cases (users) of apps like these. Great! 😎😎
@artboiko@katelosse thanks for the explanation Artem. yup the best way to experience it is to download it and try it out for yourself. but you can also watch a video on the iPhone app here: or one on the Watch app here:
Yolk.fm
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