From BuyNothing to HadtobeHere: The Product Roadmap Detour that became the Way

That's me making a short video for Buy Nothing Project Admin Group members explaining our early process for synthesizing and incorporating community feedback and product guidance. The Admin Group did not play, and I learned an incredible amount from them by shutting up and really listening. Cant' wait to see so many more of their product inventions come to life through BuyNothing over the next decade.

I had never spent more than a moment thinking about augmented reality before 2022. Reality on it's own was keeping me busy enough. We were knee-deep in the go-to-market efforts for the independent BuyNothing application. It was charting consistently in the Top 50 on the App Store Social Networking charts at that point (peaking at #20 that year). We were somehow beating WeChat, Skype, PlentyofFish and plenty of other hyper-funded social products, all without a marketing budget. We still haven't fallen out of the Top 200 for more than a few days in 5 years. I was, and still am, in awe of the power of the global Buy Nothing Project frontline community and the hundreds of thousands of new participants who joined the movement through the app, because they finally had an on-ramp, other than through Meta-owned products.

I was obsessed with finding innovative ways to use the product to empower the folks to access free community-based gifts, as an alternative to traditional e-commerce. I was working on a designing an app and browser-based product that would present users/community members with just-in-time alternatives (sourced from their BuyNothing feed) to priced goods they were purchasing through traditional e-commerce channels. I was toying with the feature name 'BuyNothingNow!' For example, imagine typing twin bed frame in the Amazon search bar and getting a browser/app notification letting you know that there are 14 twin bed frames available as gifts from within a 15-mile radius of your home and asking if you'd like to have the app automatically list you as someone willing to claim each one from the gifter, and providing you with the option to view each listing side-by-side with Amazon merchandise you're reviewing.

That's the experience. I saw it as a simple and relatively lightweight gift economy innovation that would travel with new and old BuyNothing users daily, helping to build trust in the app product and creating daily value through ambient presence.

It was the next related product concept that opened my mind to the practical power of Augmented Reality technology. One of the magic moments in the BuyNothing experience is when you've requested/claimed a gift, and you're chosen as the recipient by the gifter - especially when you really want the thing, and the gifter has a credible gifting history/resume and great endorsements. It can feel like Christmas morning or winning the lottery. I noticed that there was an opportunity to extend the delight for these users by giving them the power to imagine and visualize the gift in their home as they awaited pick-up or drop-off. That's the first time I had reason to study 'Enhanced Visual Placement.' Tools like IKEA Kreativ and IKEA Place use the technology to help their customers visualize merchandise at home pre-purchase, as part of their e-commerce efforts. I thought, why not BuyNothing, too. I still think so.

I stopped working day-to-day at BuyNothing at 2023 and went into public service for a couple years, waiting for my BuyNothing learnings to germinate as I began working on new projects in my downtime. In many ways, I'm picking up where I left off on the BuyNothing product roadmap with my product lens for HadtobeHere. The product is designed to deliver just-in-time social insights to users and to help them re-imagine their local environments as social playgrounds.

It's an effort, through product imagination, to make us all social explorers again, like we all were as children and younger people. I'm building to make every neighborhood and city block feel the way college campuses feel during the first month of the new school year: endless social possibilities, and a new experience to laugh or commiserate about every weekend. Our neighborhoods and cities, in every corner of the world, hold these hidden social treasures behind the veil of polite custom and learned social restraint. HadtobeHere is designed to pierce the veil, and bring us closer together through curiosity, discovered kinship, and serendipitous connection, wherever on the campus, in the city, or on the globe we find ourselves.

Watch us build and come and be present with us when it goes live in Baltimore and College Park, MD later this year.