Build the smallest honest thing, then live with it.

Start with the smallest honest thing

I try hard not to build the grand version first. The grand version is a guess dressed up as a plan, and a guess is expensive to get wrong. So the first cut of a feature is deliberately humble: just enough to be genuinely useful on one real trip, and honest about what it can't do yet. Then it ships, before I've talked myself into anything clever.

Then I live with it

That's where the real design happens. I use the thing, the rough edges surface on their own, and the next version more or less writes itself. Almost nothing in OutPack is on its first go. Most of it is quietly on its third or fourth, because I keep using it and keep noticing what's awkward at the worst moment.

Adding gear to a trip, take three or four

Here's the latest example. Getting gear onto a trip has always worked, but the earlier versions were fiddly: too much hunting, too much hopping back and forth. This turn keeps it all in one place. Browse by category or kit, search when you already know what you want, tick things in, and watch the running list and the weight tally build on the right as you go.

It's better than what came before. It won't be the last word either, and that's rather the point.

Shaped by the people using it

I'd sooner ship something small and true than something big and hopeful. If a feature is early, I'll flag it as beta, so you know where it stands before you lean on it. The map of what OutPack should become gets drawn by the people actually out there using it — getting on for a thousand of you now — far better than I could draw it alone.

So this is the bit I most want to say: your feedback is genuinely welcome. A bug that's tripped you up, a feature you wish existed, a rough edge that nags, even a half-formed idea scribbled after a trip. It all gets read, and a lot of it ends up shaping the next version. When you tell me what rubs, you're not filing a complaint. You're doing the design. Please do send it.