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 not really about publishing reviews. It is a reference for myself first, 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.
This is the one place where the whole product is explained. The rest of the page stays on the choices behind it.
(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.
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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.
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.
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 not be the recommendation itself, but the reason behind it.
That remains a direction for the product, not something I present as shipped.
