your co-host can talk you through the app

the first few minutes in a new app are the ones most people never get past. you sign up from an ad, you land on a screen full of words, and you are asked to make choices about something you do not understand yet. underway already offers three ways to see how it works before you film anything: look around a real account, watch the welcome film, or let the app light up its own screens one at a time. now there is a fourth, and it talks.

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talk me through it puts your co-host on a short voice call while you click around. press it, the screen counts 3, 2, 1, and your co-host joins and says hello by its name: it is here to take you round the app, it takes a few minutes, click anywhere you like and ask anything out loud. then it lets you lead.

it is a conversation, not a script. you go where you want: today, the vault, context, account, the directory. each time you land on a page your co-host is told which page it is and what is on it, so it can say in a sentence what the page is for and answer whatever you ask about it. why does today count episodes and not days? what happens to a moment i record? where do my connections go? you ask the way you would ask a person sitting next to you.

it can point, and it can open a page

sometimes words are slower than pointing. so your co-host can light something up on the page you are on, the record button, the tabs on an episode, the bar along the top, the same soft spotlight show me around my app uses. and when you ask to see somewhere, or say yes when it offers, it can open the page for you. it only ever opens the app's own main pages, and it never moves you anywhere you did not ask to go.

while the call is on, a small card sits in the corner: who is speaking, the time left, mute and end the call. it rides along with you from page to page, so clicking around never drops the call. on a phone-width screen it sits along the bottom, clear of the page's own buttons.

what it knows, and what it will not say

your co-host is told what each screen does from a short set of notes we keep next to the app's code, written to match the app as it is built. if you ask about something those notes do not cover, it says it does not know rather than guess. it will not invent a feature, a button or a number. it does not read your episodes or your connected tools on this call: it knows your first name, your series and whether episode zero is made, and that is all it needs to show you round.

a few minutes, then the next step

the call is five minutes at the most. at about four and a half your co-host starts to wrap up, and it ends by suggesting the natural next step: episode zero, if you have not made it yet, a short conversation about what you are building, with a practice first if you want one. if you already have, your next episode, from today, whenever suits you. then it says goodbye.

nothing is recorded, and it costs nothing

this call is not an episode. nothing on it is recorded or kept: no audio file, no transcript, nothing added to what the app remembers about you. the only thing written down is that you had the call, so it is counted.

every account gets one, on every plan, the free one included. it never uses your co-host minutes and never counts against your five free episodes. if the call never connects, a dropped connection or a microphone the browser kept off, it is given back and you can press it again.

where to find it

• on today, in getting started, as the fourth way to see how it works: talk me through it.
• in account, under billing and help, next to show me around my app. it stays there until you have had your call.

it needs a microphone and works best with headphones, because on a speaker your co-host can hear itself. it is on the web for now. the phone app does not offer it yet, because the phone's screens are its own, and a guide that described the web's pages there would be describing the wrong app.

why a voice

the whole of underway is built on one idea: talking is easier than writing. an interview asked out loud gets a better answer than a form, and a co-host you can interrupt gets a better conversation than a list of questions. it would be strange to explain an app like that with a wall of text. so the first person you meet in underway is the same voice that will ask you about your work in episode zero, and by the time you get there you will already have talked to it once.

faqs

start your series, free, and let your co-host show you round. start free.