01
Start once
One tap starts a trail of timestamped points. Closing the app doesn't stop it; only an explicit stop does. Today's distance, time and steps update live.
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Case Study · Mobile App · Concept to Build
Detour: your day, measured.
An always-aware distance and time tracker for Android. Detour records your movement in the background, recognises the places you return to, and lets you measure any stretch of your day after the fact. There's no start button to remember and no lost trips.
Detour in 15 secondsSign in · verify · track · name places · compare A to B
01 · The Problem
Forget to press start, and the trip never happened.
Strava, Huawei Health and every other tracker I used asked for the same thing: open the app, tap start, move, tap stop. When I forgot the first tap, or didn't think of a trip as an "activity", that movement was simply gone.
Session-based trackers fail in two predictable ways:
The burden is on memory…
…you have to recognise, in the moment, that a trip is worth measuring, then remember to stop it when you arrive.
…and the data is locked into sessions.
You can review "today's run", but you can't ask how long the stretch from the garage to the toll gate actually took.
Design goal: capture everything automatically, then let people ask the question afterwards: how far, and how long, from A to B?Core promise · Move first, ask later
02 · The Solution
Start once. Let it run. Ask later.
02
Places name themselves
When the trail passes a place you've saved, Detour recognises it and logs the time. "Oduduwa Hall recognised, 07:26."
03
Compare any two points
Pick a start and an end from the trail. Detour measures only the stretch between them: distance, time and average speed.
03 · The Shift
From sessions to one continuous trail.
Detour isn't a better fitness app. It changes the order of the steps. The day becomes one queryable timeline instead of a pile of separate, manually bookended workouts.
Session trackers
- Decide to track
- →
- Start
- →
- Move
- →
- Stop
- →
- Review
Miss the first step and nothing is recorded.
Detour
- Move
- →
- Already recording
- →
- Ask: A to B?
Every trip is captured, including the ones you didn't plan to measure.
From · AMayfair GarageIle-Ife · 08:05
→
To · BIbadan Toll GateLagos–Ibadan Expy · 10:41
Distance92.3 km
Time2h 36m
Example query from a Tuesday drive from Ile-Ife to Ibadan, answered after the trip was over.
04 · Key Features
Distance and time, nothing louder.
Compare
Point-to-point queries
Choose any two points on a trail and get the distance, time and average speed between them. This is the feature the whole product is built around.
Track
One tap, then it just runs
Tracking keeps recording when the app is closed. Only an explicit stop ends it.
Recognise
Automatic places
Saved places are matched whenever a trail point is nearby, so the timeline reads "Oduduwa Hall", not coordinates.
Name
Save current place
One tap opens "Name this place". Type "Religious Ground", save, and Detour remembers it from then on.
Today
A live 24-hour view
Distance, time and steps for today sit at the top of Home and update as you move.
Units
Kilometres or miles
A single toggle switches every distance in the app.
History
Recent sessions
Each completed trail is kept with its total distance and duration, ready to compare later.
Sign in
Email-code accounts
Sign in with email, confirm a six-digit code from your inbox, and you're in.
Own it
A permanent identity
Choose a username and profile photo once. The username is locked, and the app says so before you commit.
05 · On the Ground
Tested on real trips across four states.
I tested Detour on my own Android phone while moving around campus, across Ile-Ife, and on the road to Ibadan and Lagos. These are the places on my trail, some named by hand and some picked up automatically.
Ile-Ife, Osun
- Adekunle Fajuyi Hall Added
- Oduduwa Hall Auto
- Religious Ground Added
- Mayfair Garage Added
- Oja (Lagere) Added
- Ife City Hall Auto
Ibadan, Oyo
- Trans Amusement Park Auto
- Ibadan Toll Gate Auto
Lagos
- Adeola Odeku St. Auto
Ondo
- CLC (Akure), Oba Ile Added
06 · Design Approach
Quiet over busy.
Fitness dashboards compete for attention with charts, badges and streaks. Detour takes its cue from calm, geometric puzzle games like Infinity Loop. You should understand your day at a glance and get on with it.
- One glance, one actionHome answers "how far, how long today?" with three numbers and a single tracking control. Everything else sits below.
- Names before coordinatesPeople think in "Fajuyi Hall" and "the toll gate", not latitude and longitude. Places turn a GPS trail into a timeline anyone can read.
- A restrained paletteWarm off-white space, deep teal for structure, and one coral accent for the moment that matters. No gamification.
- Language that lowers the stakesThe micro-copy explains what will happen before it happens, especially around always-on location, where trust matters most.
Ready when you are.Make it yours.Name this place.The useful bit.
Paper #F5F5F1
Ink #16383A
Teal #2C6863
Trail #2C8C8C
Coral #DE7A5F
Blush #F4D6CB
Mist #E6ECE8
07 · Build Process
From a forgotten start button to a working app.
- Discovery
Problem framed from my own trips
Named the gap in session-based trackers: movement you don't deliberately start is lost, and data can't be queried across a day.
- Concept note & brief
Defined what Detour is, and isn't
Wrote the concept note and app brief. That meant two tracking modes (always-on and daily), a 24-hour view, point-to-point queries and unit choice. I was explicit that Detour is not a fitness app.
- Scoping
Flagged the hard constraints early
Documented Android background-location permissions, battery use, and storing and querying a continuous trail. Settled on Android first, testing through Expo links and APKs before any store listing.
- Build
Onboarding, tracking and compare
Built the email-code sign-in, the Make it yours profile step, live tracking on Home, saved places with Name this place, and the Compare tab.
- Field test
Tested on Android on real routes
Ran Detour on my own phone around OAU, Ile-Ife, Ibadan, Lagos and Ondo, and fixed issues as they surfaced, including profile image uploads on native.
- Launch assets
Brand, mockups and showreel
Designed the trail mark, rebuilt every screen as clean Android mockups, cut a 15-second showreel and wrote this case study.
08 · Screens
Inside the app.
09 · Under the Hood
Architecture & technical decisions.
Architecture
- Expo / React Native app with two tabs, Home and Compare, plus a profile screen
- Movement stored as one continuous trail of timestamped location points
- Point-to-point engine that measures distance and elapsed time between any two points on a trail
- Saved places matched to nearby trail points, so stops appear by name
- Email-code authentication, with a permanent username and profile image per account
Product decisions
- Distance and time are the constants; steps are secondary and never the focus
- Closing the app never stops tracking; only an explicit stop does
- Units switch globally between kilometres and miles
- Clear consent around location, in line with Play Store background-location policy
- Distribution to testers by Expo link or APK before a public store listing
The Mark
detour.
A single looping path with a coral point on it: a route, and one moment on that route. It's the product's whole idea in one line. Wherever you went, Detour can tell you how far and how long it took.
10 · Outcome
Concept note to working product.
1 tap
to start tracking, then it runs until you choose to stop it
10 places
saved across Osun, Oyo, Lagos and Ondo, some named by hand and some recognised automatically
Any A → B
distance and time between any two points on a trail, measured after the fact
Detour shows how I work: I find a real, specific frustration, reduce it to one clear idea, and carry that idea through strategy, interface, language and brand to something people can hold in their hand. It's the same instinct I bring to executive systems and event operations: capture what happens, then make it easy to ask the right question.
Next: a map view of each day's trail, multi-day queries, sharing a single A-to-B segment, battery-aware all-day tracking, and iOS.