A fresh quest. A reason to step outside. Find your answer in the everyday.
Take a photo. Share your view.
A passing cloud. A familiar street. Ordinary things, seen a little differently.
A daily photo ritual, together.
A shared journal. Made by all of us.
Wherever you are, we’re looking for the same thing. One shared idea. Your own way of seeing it.
See how others saw it.
Your contributions, gathered in a personal journal. Little things worth looking back on.
ake part. Unlock the mosaic.
App Icon
Intro
Capture Screen
Home Screen
Quest Gallery View
Profile & Streaks

Inspiration

Most social platforms encourage people to share their personal lives, compete for attention, and carefully curate how they appear to maximize their own exposure. We wanted to create something more meaningful: an anonymous daily ritual that helps people notice the world around them, as a community rather than competition.

What We Saw was inspired by a simple question: what would happen if thousands of people received the same photo quest, but interpreted it through their own surroundings, cultures, and perspectives? If everyone takes a picture of their food, what will that large gallery look like around the globe?

What it does

What We Saw gives everyone one shared photo quest each day, such as “Take a picture of something red,” “Take a picture of the sky,” or “Take a picture of something circular.” Users have 24 hours to capture and submit their interpretation. Only after contributing can they unlock the global gallery mosaic of that day and explore how other people around the world responded to the same quest.

The result is a beautiful collaborative visual journal of the Earth, built from ordinary moments, different perspectives, and one shared idea.

How we built it

We built the application using Flutter and Dart to deliver a consistent experience on all platforms. The system generates optimized image derivatives for different screen sizes, removes unnecessary metadata for privacy, and uses cloudflare to serve images efficiently. Firebase supports application data and daily prompts, while automated moderation helps detect unsafe, inappropriate, or irrelevant submissions before they enter the public mosaic. Manual moderation is done via a separate sister application before the final mosaic is released.

We also designed the interface around a tactile, handmade visual identity, using photo stamps, paper textures, stickers, popsickle sticks, and subtle sound and haptic feedback, to make the whole thing feel like a handmade journal.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was balancing openness with safety. A global photo-sharing platform needs strong moderation without making users wait or requiring every image to be reviewed manually.

We also had to design an image architecture capable of supporting anything from a small community to a mosaic containing millions of photographs. This involved carefully considering thumbnail sizes, image compression, storage costs, loading performance, access control, and privacy.

Another challenge was preserving the simplicity of the idea. Every feature had to support the anonymous daily ritual rather than turn the product into another follower-driven social network.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of creating a social experience where participation matters more than popularity. There are no follower counts or pressure to build a personal brand.

We developed a scalable image-processing pipeline, a privacy-conscious submission process, and an immersive mosaic that allows users to move seamlessly between individual photographs and the larger collective picture.

Most importantly, we created an experience that makes ordinary moments feel worth noticing.

What we learned

We learned that building an image-based platform is not only a design challenge but also an infrastructure, moderation, privacy, and community-design challenge.

We discovered how strongly small product decisions influence user behaviour. Requiring users to contribute before viewing the mosaic creates curiosity while keeping the experience participatory.

We also learned that the product’s emotional identity is just as important as its technical foundation. The interface needed to feel human, warm, and reflective rather than fast, competitive, or addictive.

What's next for What We Saw

Next, we plan to refine the UI to feel even warmer, expand the daily prompt experience with themed collections, personal archives, and interactive world mosaics, etc... We will also be incrementally improving and streamlining our moderation system as we go.

Our long-term vision is for What We Saw to become a shared visual record of everyday life: one prompt, one day, and thousands of perspectives.