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Side B

A personal mapping app for vinyl lovers, built for taste, not ratings.

Context

Vinyl heads know the feeling: you're in a new city and wonder where the good record stores are, not the top-rated ones, but the ones that match your taste.

I built Side B to scratch that itch. First for myself, then for friends, and eventually for a wider community of collectors. The app connects vinyl lovers to record stores that suit their taste, using Discogs data and a growing map of human-curated favorites.

This isn’t just a passion project. It’s a fully designed and shipped product built in React, using Supabase for the backend and AI-assisted workflows to speed up development and content generation. I use it as a way to explore new tools, test ideas quickly, and push myself beyond the limitations of client work.

Side B lets me:

  • Start from zero and shape the product vision

  • Build a fully functional frontend + database

  • Explore invisible UX and AI-enhanced interactions

  • Prototype faster using tools like Cursor, Claude, and Framer

It's part product, part playground and a reflection of how I think, work, and experiment when I have full creative control.

The Opportunity

Every vinyl collector I know keeps loose notes, Google pins, or DMs about great record stores. And we constantly ask each other the same question: “Any good digging spots in …?”

But nothing out there makes that kind of word-of-mouth knowledge easily accessible or personal. Maps don’t understand taste. Review sites reward popularity. And directories are noisy and impersonal. I saw a gap for something quieter, more thoughtful: a way to remember places you've loved, discover new ones through trusted overlap, and build a map that feels like yours.

Tools & Stack

Figma
Design & prototyping

Framer
Landing page

Supabase
Auth, sync, and data layer

React
Web app MVP

Cursor
Dev + AI pair programming

GPT-4o & Claude
Design & UX ideation support

Vision & Approach

I designed Side B with a few non-negotiables:

  • Taste over ratings
    No reviews, no stars — just your own growing map of trusted spots.

  • Map-first, not list-first
    Discovery starts with place. Side B opens on a map, not a search bar.

  • Fast capture, rich memory
    Saving a store should be instant. From there, you can add notes, tags, and a photo. As much or as little as you want.

  • Delightfully minimal
    Clean, quiet, and distraction-free. This is a personal tool, not a content feed.

Key Product & UX Decisions

The map is the UI
The entire experience orbits around the map. You can drop a pin anywhere, where you’re standing, or where you plan to go, and save it in seconds. It mirrors how real-life discovery happens.

Zero-friction saving
Capturing a new store is fast: tap the map or your location, jot a note if you like, hit save. Done. No forced forms, no account wall. You can even use the app in full guest mode.

Taste-aware sharing (without social features)
The app quietly learns from overlaps. If you and someone else both saved stores X and Y in different cities, there's a good chance you'd enjoy each other's picks elsewhere. Side B surfaces this organically. No ratings, no feeds, just relevant discoveries from kindred ears.

Built for travel
Side B works best when you’re on the move. It’s built to support trip planning, serendipitous finds, and remembering that one killer shop you stumbled across two years ago.

How it was built

Side B was designed, prototyped, and built using a modern, AI-assisted workflow. Tools like GPT-4o, Cursor, and Claude helped accelerate decision-making, unlock better naming and UX language, and streamline early development.

Rather than using AI as a shortcut, I treated it as a creative partner, one that made space for deeper thinking and faster iteration.