Offwalk is an iOS app that connects cafés, bookstores, vintage shops, galleries, parks, and landmarks into curated neighborhood walks.
I started this product from scratch and evolved it from a travel-planning prototype into a focused consumer MVP, launched it through TestFlight, and built a landing-page funnel to acquire and learn from beta users.
Role: Founder & Product Builder
Ownership: Product Strategy, Research, UX/UI, Engineering, Launch, and Growth
Stage: Beta Launch
Ownership: Product Strategy, Research, UX/UI, Engineering, Launch, and Growth
Stage: Beta Launch
Tool: Cursor, Claude Design, Claude Code, Figma, Github
Link: offwalk.app
Problem
People discover places across social media, Maps, blogs, and recommendations from friends. But a collection of saved places does not answer:
- Which places located near each other?
- What order makes sense?
- How many places can I fit into an afternoon?
Existing products provide inspiration or directions, but rarely turn scattered recommendations into a cohesive experience someone can immediately follow.
How might we turn saved places into a walk someone can actually take?
From Idea to Prototype to Offwalk
I started with users research, sending out surveys and conducting interviews. The first version was an AI tool for planning multi-stop city itineraries to test out the capabilities and end-to-end AI-native development flow.
Based on the insights from research and the first prototype, I narrowed the product around neighborhood exploration and rebranded it as Offwalk - a product for people who love neighborhoods. This also created differentiation to other products on the market, such as Google map, AllTrails, Strava, etc.
User research materials
Prototype - AI-generated experience
Design
Design and iterate with Claude Design
Building with Claude Code, documentation, Github repo
The Solution
Offwalk turns a list of places into a neighborhood walk that is ready to explore.
Add places
Enter the cafés, shops, parks, and landmarks you want to visit.
Create a walk
Offwalk organizes your places into a neighborhood route with optimization indicator, reducing manual planning and unnecessary backtracking.
Explore and share
Save the walk as you go, or share it with friends.
Launch and Growth
After development, I launched Offwalk through TestFlight for beta testing to collect feedback from real usage.
I also built Offwalk.app landing page and working on Instagram account as a acquisition funnel:
Social Media -> Landing-page visit -> beta install -> first walk -> feedback
The page lets high-intent visitors discover the product and join the beta while capturing emails from people who want future updates.
Key Takeaways
Focus created differentiation.
Narrowing the problem produced a clearer audience, use case, and brand.
Lead with the outcome, not AI.
Users care about curating a great neighborhood experience—not how it was generated.
Build distribution with the product.
The landing page helped test positioning and create an acquisition path while the MVP was still evolving.
AI accelerated execution; judgment shaped the product.
The most important decisions were what to build, what to remove, and what to learn next.
