Visual · hero
Independent product
Outpost
Building a personal reference for the trips I want to remember.
Outpost started from a very simple need: I wanted one place to keep track of where I had been, what I liked, what I did not, and what made a trip stand out. It is a reference for myself first, not a review site, with the option to share it with someone who was part of the trip.
(01) Problem
A score forgets too much
An 8/10 says very little about why a place mattered. The same score can come from a weekend with friends, a year living somewhere, a food trip, or a period of life that had nothing to do with the destination itself.
Writing a long review after every trip would preserve more, but I would never keep doing it. The product needs just enough structure to make a memory useful later without turning it into admin.
The product
Outpost in three moves
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01
Save a trip
A few pieces of context: how long, who with, what was actually experienced.
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02See it on the map
Each trip lands on a personal map, the main object of the product.
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03Share or compare it with someone close
Show your version of a trip to someone who was there, and see what you remember differently.
(02) Verdict
Keep the context, but let memory win
The input flow keeps a small amount of context: how long the trip lasted, who was there, what kind of trip it was and what was actually experienced. A simple verdict gives me a shorthand I can recognise later.
That verdict is never meant to overrule the memory. If the system suggests an A and I still think the trip was a C, I keep the C. The structure should explain a judgement, not replace it.
Building the product also changed what I wanted the main screen to be. Early versions leaned more heavily on a dashboard. Once I used them, that felt too analytical for something that was supposed to hold memories.
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01
Add a place
0:00From the map: tap Add, type the place.
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02
A few questions
0:04Food, evenings, scenery, how it felt, would you recommend it. One tap per answer.
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03
A suggested verdict
0:07Outpost suggests A, Great, with the score behind it.
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04
The person has the last word
0:09It felt more like a C, so the C wins.
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05
Back on the map
0:11Lisbon lands on the map with its C.
123- 1The map fills the whole screen; the sidebar floats over it.
- 2The tier list collapses into one line.
- 3A selected place takes focus without shrinking the map.
(03) Map
The map became the main object
A list helps me find a score. A map shows the shape of my travel history: repeated places, long stays, gaps, and the places I keep coming back to.
So I kept removing interface around it. That decision came from using the product, not from trying to make the screen look cleaner in isolation.
(04) Sharing
Share a trip without building another social network
The social part is useful when it stays close to the trip itself. If I travelled somewhere with someone, I want to be able to share my version of that trip, see what we remember differently and keep something that makes sense to both of us.
I do not need a feed, followers or a compatibility percentage to do that. The travel context already makes the comparison useful.
The main product risk is still over-structuring something emotional. If a field does not improve the memory or the comparison, it probably does not belong in the flow.
(05) Next
Where it could go next
One future direction is planning a new trip together using both travel histories. The interesting part would be the reason behind each suggestion.
It is a direction; nothing is shipped.
