Orbit

Starting point

The challenge

Deciding where to go out is still guesswork. Event listings go stale, social feeds only show where friends already were, and none of it tells you whether a place is packed or empty right now. Orbit started as our founder’s own problem: the information exists, scattered across a dozen apps, and none of it is organized around where you are standing.

What we set out to do

Goals

• Answer one question quickly — what is happening near me, right now — instead of showing a calendar of things scheduled weeks out.
• Show live activity, so a user can tell the difference between a venue that is full and one that is technically open.
• Make posting a spot or an event take seconds, because a discovery app is only as good as what the people using it contribute.
• Keep location sharing something a user turns on deliberately, never a default that runs quietly in the background.
• Build it native for iOS so the map, location and notifications behave the way the rest of the phone does.

Strategy

Approach

Orbit is being built natively in Swift rather than wrapped in a web view, because the product leans on the parts of the phone a browser handles poorly: continuous location, map rendering, and notifications that arrive while the app is closed. It is organized around a map and a now view rather than an endless feed, so the first thing a user sees is proximity and timing instead of popularity.

Design decisions

• The map is the home screen. Opening the app puts you at your own location with what is happening around it, rather than at a sign-up wall or a scrolling feed.
• Activity is shown as relative density and recency, not as a precise headcount. An exact number the app cannot verify reads as a lie the first time it is wrong.
• Location is requested at the moment it is used, with the reason attached, so permission is a decision the user makes knowingly rather than a dialog they dismiss on launch.
• Events and user-submitted spots share one card shape. A single consistent unit keeps the map readable as the mix of content changes.
• The primary controls sit inside thumb reach on a large phone, because this app gets used while walking, one-handed, outside.

Features

What we built

• Map-first discovery view showing events and spots around the user’s current location
• Real-time activity signals indicating where people are gathering, refreshed as the picture changes
• Event detail with time, venue and directions handed off to the phone’s own maps app
• User-submitted spots and events, so the map fills in from the people actually out
• Saving and following, so a user can keep a shortlist rather than re-finding places each time
• Push notifications for saved events and nearby activity while the app is closed
• Accounts and profiles with per-feature location permissions the user controls

Technology

Where it landed

Outcome

Orbit is in development. What exists is a native iOS app that places nearby events and active spots on a map, ordered by proximity and recency rather than by who paid for placement, with the map filled in by the people using it. Released, it gives someone standing on a street a straight answer to where to go next.