From idea to prototype in a day
One June morning, Shorewalk was a sentence on a whiteboard. That evening the app was on TestFlight. This is how we use rapid prototypes to test an idea before anyone puts money into it.
One morning in early June, Shorewalk was a sentence: “Cruise tourists in Kristiansand should have a guide in their pocket.” That evening an app sat on TestFlight with a name, a brand, eleven screens and an audio-guided walk through the old town. No backend and no database, but something people can hold and have opinions about.
The idea
Around 200,000 cruise passengers came ashore in Kristiansand in 2025. Most have a few hours, no plan and patchy coverage. The concept is a QR code at the quay, an app with a free guide to the city, and audio walks that tell the stories as you go. Shore + walk. The name works in English and German, and the idea fits any Norwegian port.
Why one day
A slide deck gets you a discussion about hypotheses. An app on someone's phone gets you feedback you can decide on: “the onboarding is too long”, “I'd pay for this”, “it needs Danish”.
If the concept doesn't hold, you want to know after one day, not after three months and a six-figure invoice. A prototype that kills a bad idea has done its job.
The day
Names first. The working title died on a trademark, the second candidate on a competitor with a near-identical name in the App Store. The third, Shorewalk, was clear in the trademark registers, the App Store and for domains. We registered the domains and reserved the App Store name the same morning. One hour of boring searches saves months of rebranding.
Then the icon. Three rounds of AI-assisted exploration took us from six very different concepts to a gold S on a petrol-blue field, where a cruise ship, its route and a southern Norwegian town are drawn into one shape.
Then the app, in Ionic Capacitor with one codebase for iOS and Android, the same stack we run other apps on in production. Eleven screens with real navigation and simulated data: a welcome screen, an explore tab, and walk mode with an audio player and geofence notifications. Then build, signing and upload to TestFlight, with the evening still young.
What the demo is
There is no server. The data is typed in by hand, the purchase flow is a stage prop, and every screen has a small footnote that says “vision demo”. It isn't going to production. Its job is to show the product precisely enough for someone to make decisions.
The choices that matter are real, though. It works offline, because cruise tourists don't have roaming, and the geofence notifications work without coverage. The audio is made for a phone speaker in a busy summer street. Those decisions carry over into the real build, and we made them while they were cheap to change.
How we like to start
If you have an idea for an app or a web service, in Kristiansand or anywhere else, we'll suggest a prototype before a big project: one day, maybe a week, and something you can show your board or put in front of real users. Then we both know what we're talking about before anyone commits.
Shorewalk is heading for a test during the summer season.