Scratch My Map
Create your own free online scratch map. Mark where you've been, plan where to go next, and see where your friends travel.
Why
In 2017, a scratch map was a travel souvenir: scratch the foil off a country and watch your wall fill with places you’d been. We wanted that map to start a conversation. Which friend had already been to the country you were planning to visit, and what could they tell you?
My brother built the first web version, and I joined to build the mobile apps. The idea was a free online scratch map that could grow into a social network for travelers. A colored country would lead to someone’s trips, photos and experience: the route they took, the budget they needed, the things they wished they’d known.
It was also our way to keep learning while building something real. New technologies had to earn their place in a product people could use, with all the releases, feedback and maintenance that came with it.
How
- Scratch your map: mark countries you’ve visited, plan to visit, were born in or now call home.
- Keep the story behind each country: add trips, impressions and photos, and rate your experience.
- Explore with friends: follow their travels, leave comments and find someone to ask before your next trip.
We launched the web version in June 2017. Android followed, then iOS in September 2018. That November, we added World Quiz, a geography game in the same network. When users asked to try the map before signing in, we added anonymous accounts; they could register later and keep their trip history.
Keeping the project alive became its own engineering challenge. I was the only mobile engineer across Scratch My Map and World Quiz, four apps in total. In 2020, I began moving Scratch My Map to Kotlin Multiplatform: the Android release arrived that November, followed by iOS in February 2021, with around 80% of the code shared and native interfaces retained. The six-month migration story is on the blog.
Scratch My Map remains available on the web, Android and iOS: a project that began with coloring countries and became a long-running experiment in sharing travel experience and sustaining a small product.
