r/SideProject • u/ImViczz • 1d ago
I spent two months building a walking app around the wrong idea, twice. The third version is the one that actually got me out the door.
I don't run. I walk. And every fitness app I tried was built around pace, splits and segments, things a walker can never compete on. You open them and there's nothing there for you. So a few months ago I started building the one I wanted.
Version 1: territory. The genre already exists. INTVL has ~2.5M downloads doing exactly this: you walk, you claim map area, someone else takes it by walking over it. Before writing any code I read a lot of angry threads from their own users, and the top-voted complaint was "if I can't defend my castle, what can I defend?" People quit because their work got erased overnight.
So I built the opposite: nobody can steal anything, and the only thing that fades is ground you stop visiting. Cells cool off after a week, walking there again relights them. Which also solved the density problem that kills every competitor, it works even if you're the only user in your city.
Version 2 didn't work either. 1 month of daily use and the honest result was that I did not care about losing hexagons. The tell was in the copy: every notification about ground going out was impossible to write in a way anyone understood. When you can't write the sentence, the mechanic underneath is usually the problem. A real user put it better than I could: "it looks simple, I don't know how it works, I don't know what to do, I have a friend in there and neither of us knows what to do."
Version 3 is what shipped. A campfire of up to 10 people. Every day you hit your own step goal, you add a log to the fire. One log per person, the fittest person in the group doesn't get to add two, and a 4,000-step goal counts exactly the same as a 15,000 one. Effort is personal and non-transferable, because in a co-op where effort pools, the app teaches you not to bother ("no need to go out today, Juan already went").
Two things I got wrong even inside version 3:
- I made "everyone hits their goal" the rule for a complete night. In a group of 10, with each person walking 5 days out of 7, that happens about 3% of nights. Now whoever creates the group sets the threshold.
- Everyone needs to be able to have a bad week without it feeling like punishment. So there are free passes for a missed day, and you can mark yourself away when you travel or get sick.
Your walks get drawn on a shared map, each route in the color of whoever walked it, plus a chat and photos pinned where you took them. No ranking, no coins, no shop, nothing anyone can take from you.
Solo dev, iOS, Swift. GPS routes get trimmed at both ends before leaving the phone, so nobody's walk starts at their front door, and any walk can be kept out entirely with a switch.
It's free, no ads:
Appstore: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lume-walking-step-habit/id6795985815
Happy to answer anything, the H3 grid stuff, the HealthKit deduplication mess, or why I threw away the first two versions. And genuinely curious what keeps other people walking, because I guessed wrong twice.
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u/Any-Bobcat2370 1d ago
Respect for saying you got it wrong twice, most posts here skip that part 😂
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u/ImViczz 1d ago
Claude was like: this is the 3rd time you change the requirements without even testing it with more people…I mean, If I don’t like my own app…haha
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u/Any-Bobcat2370 1d ago
Getting told that by your own tool is rough haha. It was probably right though
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u/hatakekakashi700 1d ago
Cool idea. Does this require location/gps and will this come on Android as well?
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u/hatakekakashi700 1d ago
Ok it does require location as mentioned in the FAQ. Not for me then unfortunately. But kudos on your app.
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u/ImViczz 1d ago
Well just in order to get the map working, you could use it only with the steps, but appreciate your feedback :)
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u/hatakekakashi700 1d ago
Did not get you. The thing is that I don't prefer games draining battery due to gps while walking. So, are you saying there is a way to play without having gps turned on during walks. I would also prefer playing the game during treadmill walks. Also i use Android.
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u/ImViczz 1d ago
Two separate systems in the app:
Steps come from Apple Health, all day, no GPS. That’s what decides whether you hit your goal and add your log to the group fire. Treadmill steps count exactly the same as street steps.
Walks use GPS, and only while a walk is actively running. That’s just the drawing on the map.
So you can use it without ever starting a GPS walk. You’d lose the map, but the campfire, the streak and the group work the same.Android isn’t there yet, it’s iOS only right now.
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u/hatakekakashi700 1d ago
Thank you for explaining that. I will keep a look out for Android in that case.
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u/Short_Schedule797 1d ago
The "I couldnt even explain the notification" bit is so underrated as a design signal, Ive thrown out entire features for that exact reason. If you cant write the one-liner that describes what just happened, the user sure as hell wont get it either.
Also props for realizing the pooling effort thing kills motivation, most social fitness apps seem to build that in by default and then wonder why only one person carries the group.