01
An arrow and an honest distance.
Nearby, the app points the way and gives a distance in feet, called an estimate when it is one. It gets sharper on phones that support it, and it says when it cannot tell the way.
136tested versions in the first three months
2phone platforms, the same behaviour and words: Android and iPhone
2languages, following the phone: English and Spanish
0releases without a person deciding
The problem
Calling does not work in the noise, “where are you?” gets “by the stage”, and a map pin is a hundred people wide.
Two people come to an event together and get separated. The job was narrow on purpose: help people who already know each other find each other again, nearby first, farther apart only when both agree, and stop the moment either of them wants to.
The brief we wrote first
- Who has it: two people who already know each other, separated in a crowd
- Why tools fall short: calls fail in noise, and shared maps share too much for too long
- What done looks like: one arrow, an honest distance, and a share that always ends
- What it must never do: show where someone is without asking them first
How it was built
A small team, the latest tools at every step, and a person deciding every release.
- Researched first: the radios, the platforms and both stores’ rules
- Drafted and compared code, tests and the words on every screen, in English and Spanish
- Every version was tested, then tried on real Android phones and an iPhone
- A person decided every one of the 136 versions, and what the app may never do
What we built
Six screens that carry the whole idea.
Every picture below is the app as it ships to testers, with the sample name Alex.
02
Consent before anything is shared.
Before one person can see where the other is, the app asks, says for how long, and says where the off switch is. Nothing is shared until that answer is given.
03
A word in a crowd.
Once two phones are connected nearby, short messages go straight between them during a Find, with quick replies for when typing is hard.
04
The people you trust, in plain view.
Every person and device is listed with who can see whose location, and every connection can be changed, removed, reported or blocked in two taps.
05
Ready, or it says why.
Phones put apps to sleep in different ways. A checklist shows each setting that matters and how to fix it, in plain words.
06
One button home.
The first screen has one job: find the person you came with. Everything else is one tap away.
Everything around the app
An app is the part people see. Most of the work is the part they never have to think about.
- Accounts that move to a new phone without losing the people you trust
- Subscriptions on both stores, with a free plan that keeps working
- Group Find for one to three people, each with their own consent and Stop
- Family Access for ages 13 to 17: a parent approves each connection
- Plain-language terms, privacy policy and safety standards, reviewed by counsel
- Submissions to both app stores, with the test accounts and answers reviewers ask for
What it taught us
Three things we now do from day one.
01
Write the limits down first
Deciding what the product must never do, before the first screen, made every later decision faster and every policy shorter.
02
Test on real phones
Radios, batteries and store rules only show their real behaviour on real devices in real crowds. Testing on a desk finds only the easy problems.
03
Fast tools, careful people
The latest tools made the pace possible. Reading every change before it was kept is what made the pace safe.
Work with us
Have a problem like this?
Write to us with what you are trying to do. We answer with questions, not a quote.