Atlas

Overview

Atlas is a community-powered discovery app designed to counter algorithm-driven platforms. Instead of promoting restaurants and locations based on popularity, paid placement, or engagement metrics, Atlas elevates places that matter to real people. By crowdsourcing local knowledge, stories, and hidden gems across Oregon, Atlas creates a map shaped by everyday experiences, not algorithms or trends.

Problem

Discovery apps prioritize popularity, paid placements, and engagement metrics, causing Oregon's hidden gems, small businesses, and culturally meaningful spots to be buried under algorithm-driven results.

Competitor Analysis

Understood how algorithms shape visibility and create discovery gaps.

I found consistent patterns such as algorithms rewarding popularity, paid placements influencing ranking, and high-traffic urban areas dominating results. This competitive and algorithmic analysis helped reveal exactly where the current ecosystem falls short, and where an opportunity for Atlas could emerge.

User Research

The same gaps surfaced across every platform — and so did a clearer sense of what people actually wanted.

I looked at how people use existing discovery platforms — their goals, their frustrations, and the everyday moments when they go looking for somewhere new. Four gaps came up again and again:

Read together, those gaps point to one thing: people don't want the most popular place, they want the one that means something. A spot with character, history, or a personal story feels more meaningful than a highly-rated one — people gravitate toward places that feel real, not filtered through engagement metrics or paid placements.

That's also what makes people want to contribute. Few enjoy writing long, Yelp-style reviews, but almost everyone has a small moment they'll happily share:

• My dad always brought me here.
• This coffee shop saved me during finals.
• I stumbled on this and it changed my day.

What's missing from today's platforms is exactly that emotional context. People don't just want to know where a place is — they want to know why it matters, and those memories and feelings became the foundation for Atlas.

Opportunities

Turning key user pain points into targeted opportunity areas.

By understanding where mainstream platforms fail, four opportunities emerged — opportunities that center community knowledge, local voices, and the hidden places algorithms overlook.

Solution

A community-powered map shaped by stories, not search rankings.

Atlas turns the four opportunity areas into a single discovery experience — one where small businesses, hidden gems, and culturally meaningful spots can finally surface on their own terms. Local knowledge becomes the default, not the exception.

Prototype

A map that feels like wandering through a neighborhood with a friend.

The prototype brings Atlas' pillars together — story-driven places, hidden gems, varied discovery modes, and the Lost and Found archive — in a calm, exploratory interface that puts community context first.

Reflection

Designing against algorithms taught me to design for people first.

Atlas pushed me to question patterns I had taken for granted in discovery apps — ratings, rankings, sponsored placements. Once I started looking at the experience through the lens of small business owners and locals, the whole hierarchy of what mattered shifted. Stories outweighed star ratings, and proximity to memory felt more important than proximity in miles.

The biggest lesson was how fragile community knowledge really is. Once a place closes, a regular moves away, or a tip never makes it online, it's gone. That shaped the Lost and Found section and reframed Atlas from a discovery app into something closer to a living archive.