Wayward

Inspiration

As pedestrians in New York, we see people power walking and shoulder bumping down crowded sidewalks just to shave a few seconds off their trip. Navigation apps send everyone down the same "fastest" routes, and those routes are crowded: an MIT study of foot traffic across the city estimated about 1,700 pedestrians per sidewalk segment per hour in Midtown during the evening peak (MIT, Nature Cities). Daily walkers move on autopilot, overstimulated, rushed, and disconnected from the people and places around them. We arrive drained and barely remember the walk.

It doesn't have to be this way. In The Shortest Path to Happiness, researchers built routes that people rated as more beautiful, quiet, and happy, and found those routes were only slightly longer than the shortest ones, adding just a few minutes of walking (Quercia et al., 2014). We wanted to see what navigation would look like if it treated the walk itself as worth designing.

What it does

Wayward plans walking routes around what you enjoy, not just how fast you arrive.

Set your preferences. During onboarding, you choose what you love seeing (nature, architecture, history, bookstores and cafés, quiet streets) and what you'd rather avoid (construction, loud trains, crowds).
Choose your extra time. Before each walk, you set how many extra minutes you have with a slider. Zero is an option: on a street grid, a quieter route often takes the same time as the fastest one.
Pick a themed route. Wayward suggests several routes that fit your time and preferences, such as Scenic, Quiet, and Fastest. Each one shows what it passes, what it avoids, and how much extra time it takes.
Start your adventure. A simple timeline shows each turn and stop, so you can glance at your phone and go back to looking around. Tap a stop to see photos and what people usually do there, or open the map to see the whole route with photo previews of each stop.
Notice what's around you. As you pass a stop, Wayward nudges you to look up, pointing you toward it with a photo and a line on why it matches what you love. Tap "I see it" and keep walking.
Flag what you see. Spot construction, a blocked sidewalk, or a block that's too loud, crowded, or poorly lit? Flag it, and Wayward will route future walks, yours and other people's, around it.

How we built it

We started with research into how New Yorkers move and what makes a walk pleasant, including the studies above. We then interviewed 10 New Yorkers about their last walk, what frustrated them, and whether they'd ever take a longer route on purpose.

From the interviews we built personas and mapped the current walking journey, marking where it felt good (noticing something unexpected) and where it dipped (noise, construction, boredom with the same route). We turned the low points into "how might we" questions, mapped a new journey with Wayward, and used it to shape our user flow.

We then defined three core flows (onboarding, planning a walk, and walking), sketched reference screens, and iterated on a design system: Satoshi as the only typeface, a warm neutral palette with one green accent, an 8-point spacing scale, and a vertical timeline for the walk view. After a design audit for consistency, we built the interactive prototype in Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Convincing people in a hurry. Our interviews suggested commuters won't add time on the way to work. Instead of designing only for leisurely walkers, we added the zero-minute option, which finds an equally fast route that's quieter.
Designing for two kinds of walkers. Some people we interviewed stick to familiar routes out of habit even though they love noticing new things. Others are quick to reroute when they hit noise or crowds. We had to serve both without building two apps, so we let Wayward avoid disruptions up front and suggest new places along familiar walks.
Keeping the phone out of the way. A walking app that makes people stare at their screen defeats the purpose. We moved from a map-first design to a glanceable timeline, with the map one tap away.
Restraint in the visual design. Our early screens used too much color and too many styles. Cutting back to one accent color, five type sizes, and a consistent elevation system took several rounds.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The zero-minute option, which came straight from user research and answers the biggest objection to the idea.
The walking timeline, which shows the whole journey at a glance and keeps attention on the street.
The stop nudge, which turns the app's job from simply giving directions into helping people notice the city.
A design system that stays calm and consistent across every screen, matching how we want the walk to feel.
Grounding the concept in interviews with 10 New Yorkers and in published research.

What we learned

Familiarity is powerful. Even people who enjoy discovering things will stick to a known route if a new one feels uncertain, so previews and small changes matter more than big detours.
Small time costs change behavior. Framing extra time as something the user controls, including zero, made the idea feel realistic instead of idealistic.
Calm is a design decision. Every extra color, badge, or notification pulls attention back to the screen.

What's next for Wayward

Real-time rerouting. Today, flags help shape future routes. Next, we want flags to reroute the walker right away, and to let users add a nearby stop mid-walk.
Real data. Use public datasets, such as street construction permits and noise complaints, to build avoid zones automatically, and foot-traffic estimates like MIT's to route around the busiest sidewalks.
More testing. Test the prototype with more walkers, including commuters, visitors, and people walking at night, to refine the routing and safety options.
Remix my route. Let users swap one or two blocks of a familiar route for something new, so routines stay comfortable but less repetitive.
Hands-free cues. Explore haptic and audio prompts so users can follow the route and discover stops with the phone in their pocket.
More neighborhoods. Expand beyond our Brooklyn demo to the rest of New York.