Smart Alarm

Overview

Smart Alarm was an innovative, fully self-designed and self-implemented alarm clock app for the iPhone. Available almost since the launch of the App Store, it was my first mobile app, continuously developed over nearly a decade.

The app addressed a specific problem: while the iPhone allowed setting different alarm times for different weekdays, these alarms would also go off on public holidays and during vacation.

The Challenge

What started as a simple alarm clock grew into a feature-rich app over the years. Key challenges included:

• Preventing unwanted alarms on holidays and vacation days using location and calendar data
• Integrating multiple data sources (sensors, weather, location) for intelligent wake-up decisions
• Managing the complexity that had grown over the years while keeping the app intuitive
• Designing for a set-and-forget workflow where users interact briefly and infrequently

The Process

As the sole designer and developer, I owned the entire product lifecycle:

• Problem Identification: Born from personal frustration with iOS alarm limitations
• Feature Development: Iteratively added features based on user feedback: holiday detection, weather-based adjustments, location awareness
• Conceptual Redesign: Redesigned the entire app around the set-and-forget workflow. The app is opened briefly to toggle an alarm, so short paths were a key design goal
• High-Fidelity Prototyping: Created detailed screen prototypes in Sketch for the redesigned version
• User Feedback Integration: Continuously incorporated user suggestions, including location-based alarm toggling and the EnRoute feature

The Solution

Key features designed and built:

• Holiday-Aware Alarms: Crowdsourced database of public holidays from around the world, combined with location tracking to prevent unwanted alarms
• Personal Vacation Days: Private area for custom vacation dates to avoid being woken on days off
• Weather-Based Wake-Up: Monitors weather conditions and wakes the user earlier in bad weather (e.g. frost) to allow extra time
• Location-Based Automation: Automatically enables or disables individual alarms based on current position
• EnRoute Alarm: Enter a public transit destination stop and get woken up just before arrival
• Nightstand Mode: Displays time, weather forecast, appointments and reminders as a ticker

Results & Impact

• One of the first alarm clock apps in the App Store, maintained for nearly a decade
• The set-and-forget redesign significantly reduced interaction complexity while adding powerful automation features
• The EnRoute alarm feature was a direct result of user feedback, demonstrating responsive product development

The app was discontinued in 2017 due to time constraints.