Finding It Was the Easy Part

Samatra and I had been to this particular beach plenty of times. We had seen paddleboarders and kayakers out on the water, so when we started getting into paddleboarding and kayaking ourselves, it seemed like one of the obvious places to go. We knew where it was, we knew people paddled there, and I assumed that meant we knew enough to figure out the rest once we arrived.

Approaching the same beach with equipment changed the questions almost immediately. We were no longer just trying to get to the beach. We needed to know where we could park, where we could unload, whether there was somewhere to stage our gear, how far we would have to carry everything, and where people were actually launching. A place that had always felt familiar suddenly became much less familiar when we needed to use it in a different way.

The parking was paid and extremely limited. There was virtually nowhere convenient to stage equipment. And despite all the times we had been there and all the paddleboarders and kayakers we had seen on the water, I still did not know where those people were actually getting in. None of that meant the beach was inaccessible, but it did make something clear to me: knowing that people paddle somewhere is not the same thing as knowing how to paddle there.

Knowing that people paddle somewhere is not the same thing as knowing how to paddle there.

That distinction stayed with me because there was no real shortage of information about the location. I could find the beach on a map, get directions, look through photos, read reviews, and find websites telling me what was there. If the question was simply, “Where is this place?” the internet had already answered it pretty well. The problem was that this was no longer the question we were actually asking.

What we needed to know was whether the place would work for what we were trying to do. Where should we park? How much would it cost? Was there somewhere to unload and stage equipment? How far would we have to carry everything? Where was the actual launch point? Were there restrooms nearby? Was this somewhere we should drive an hour to visit, or would we arrive only to discover that it did not really work for us?

Individually, those questions can seem fairly small. Together, they can determine whether someone decides to go somewhere at all, and those questions eventually became the beginning of BlueGreen Guide.

At first, I was thinking mostly about paddleboarding and kayaking because that was the problem Samatra and I had encountered. I wanted something that could tell us more than where people paddled. I wanted enough practical information to help us decide whether a particular location actually made sense for us before we loaded everything up and drove there.

As I kept working through the idea, though, I began to realize that the problem was not really about paddleboarding. Paddleboarding and kayaking were simply where we encountered it first. The same kind of information gap exists with trails, parks, campgrounds, shorelines, gardens, picnic areas, nature preserves, and other outdoor spaces. You can know that a place exists without knowing very much about what going there will actually involve.

A map pin may tell you where a location is, but it may not tell you whether parking is difficult, whether there are fees, where the trail actually begins, what amenities are available, whether access is straightforward, or what you should know before making the drive. The real question is whether you understand enough about the place to decide if it actually works for what you want to do.

That realization is part of why the project became BlueGreen Guide rather than something tied permanently to paddling. The original problem happened on the water, but the broader idea became about outdoor discovery across both blue spaces and green spaces. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I was really trying to solve was the information gap between discovering a place and feeling prepared enough to actually use it.

A lot of my professional work already involves thinking about information, technology, systems, and how people actually use them, so in some ways BlueGreen Guide overlaps with the way I already think. But working on it has made the question feel much more practical and personal. I am not trying to organize information simply because it can be organized. I am trying to figure out which information actually helps somebody decide where to go and what they need to know before they get there.

I am trying to figure out which information actually helps somebody decide where to go and what they need to know before they get there.

That sounds simple until you start deciding what belongs in the guide. It would be easy to keep adding locations, fields, features, and data because all of that makes the guide look more comprehensive. While building it, though, I have had to keep asking whether adding more information actually makes it more useful.

That question naturally leads into accuracy too, because usefulness falls apart pretty quickly if the information cannot be trusted. There is something uncomfortable about putting “unknown” into a system you are building because an unknown value can make the dataset feel unfinished. It is tempting to want every field filled in, especially when you are trying to make something useful.

But I have started to think that “unknown” is often a better answer than one that looks authoritative but has not actually been verified. If I do not know whether a location has a particular amenity, I would rather say that than confidently tell someone it does and have them plan around information that turns out to be wrong. An incomplete answer can still be honest, while an inaccurate one can create a much bigger problem.

That becomes even more important when the information touches safety. I do not want BlueGreen Guide to tell someone that a place is “safe” as though an app could guarantee that. There are far too many factors involved for me to make that kind of guarantee: water conditions change, weather changes, trails change, and other conditions can change as well. Not to mention, people have different abilities, experience levels, limitations, and comfort levels. Useful information can help someone make a better decision, but I do not think the software should pretend to make that decision for them.

Thinking about usefulness, accuracy, and safety together has also shaped how I look at the current alpha test. The first version does not include every outdoor location in California, Arizona, and Nevada, and at this stage I do not think it needs to. I have been intentionally working with a curated set of locations because I am much more interested in whether the information actually helps someone than whether I can make the map look full.

I could fill the map with locations, but at this stage that would not tell me whether the idea actually works. I would learn more from a smaller group of places if testers tell me the information helped them understand where to go and what to expect, avoid an unpleasant surprise, or decide whether a location fit what they wanted to do.

That brings me back to why I started building BlueGreen Guide in the first place. Samatra and I were simply trying to figure out where we could go paddleboarding and kayaking together. There was no business plan behind that moment, and I was not looking for an app idea or trying to identify some underserved market. We wanted to get outside, and I became frustrated by the gap between the amount of information available and the amount of information that actually helped us decide where to go.

Eventually, that frustration turned into a question: could that gap be made smaller? Could someone find a place and also understand enough about it to decide whether it was actually a good option for them? Could practical information remove enough uncertainty that deciding to go somewhere became easier?

That is really what I am testing now. I already know it is possible to build another map or another directory of outdoor locations, because there are plenty of those. What I do not know yet is whether giving people better practical information will actually help them move from “That looks like somewhere we could go” to “Yeah, we can actually go there.”

I think that is the part of BlueGreen Guide I find most interesting. The problem that started this was not that we had no information. It was that the information we had did not answer the questions that mattered once we were actually trying to do something.

Maybe there is a meaningful difference between information that helps us find something and information that helps us act on what we found. I am still finding out.

“…just a thought.”

About BlueGreen Guide

BlueGreen Guide is currently in alpha testing. I’m testing whether the idea described here actually helps people make better decisions about where to get outside. If you’d like to help test it, you can request alpha access here.