Nown: Phone Down, Together

Nown (Own Your Now) makes putting your phone down a social experience. Rooted in the science of normative behavior, Nown is intentionally designed to help you be more present in life.

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Inspiration

We're Daniel and Yitong, a designer and developer couple and two surfers. The ocean first taught us the joy of being fully present. We’d paddle out with our phones left on the beach, marvel at the beautiful sunset, and be joined by the rest of the lineup catching each wave as it came. Nobody needed willpower to stay off their phone… it just wasn’t there for anyone.

Back on land, it was the opposite. Many digital products are designed to hold your attention through endless feeds and constant notifications. People increasingly want to spend less time on their phones, yet common solutions such as app blockers, screen time reports and digital detoxes depend on willpower, which is limited and temporary. Strict limits often lead to rebound use, and usage statistics can create anxiety rather than lasting change.

Nown was designed around a different principle: people tend to adopt the behaviors they see around them. By making time offline visible and shared among friends, the app turns a solitary effort into a social norm.

What it does

Nown is a digital mindfulness iOS app that helps people spend less time on their phones by making time offline visible and shared. Instead of relying on willpower or restrictions, each offline session becomes a star in a shared night sky, so choosing time away from the screen becomes something you do together with friends.

Signature Features
  1. The Starry Sky
    Unlike tools that present screen time as numbers and charts, Nown presents it as a shared night sky. Every completed Nown becomes a star in 3D space. The size of a star reflects the length of the session, and its brightness reflects how recent it is. When friends are in a session at the same time, their stars connect automatically to form a constellation. This visual system makes collective time offline visible and rewarding, without turning it into a competition.
  2. Starting a Nown
    It takes a single tap. Apps selected by the user are blocked through the iOS Screen Time API, and the selection is saved for future sessions. A Live Activity on the lock screen shows an encouraging quote and their progress, meeting the user at the moment of a habitual phone check. When each session ends, there's a short closing ritual where the user can write an optional one line reflection to inspire others.
  3. Ending a Nown early
    If a user gives up and ends a session before their timer completes, the star turns into a small piece of space trash that drifts quietly through the sky. The sky is shared, so leaving early is a bit like littering in a park: the design keeps users aware of their choices while protecting the calm, supportive tone of the app.

We think of Nown as an ambient third space for going offline, built on the same psychology as working from a coffee shop, surrounded by others focusing alongside you.

How we built it

The team: Daniel (software engineer), Yitong (UI/UX designer).

Nown is both our first time building an iOS app and our first project together as a couple! At the same time we were also balancing a long-distance relationship, which definitely had its own set of challenges.

From the design side, we first explored the core experience, then played around with different concepts in Figma. The visuals are all human-crafted and intentionally designed to provide the most benefit without needing to open the app.

We built Nown natively in SwiftUI, using Apple's Screen Time APIs to pause distracting apps, ActivityKit for the Live Activity and Dynamic Island, and WidgetKit for the Home Screen widget. Firebase powers the backend, with moderation and user safety/privacy also built-in from day one.

RevenueCat SDK is integrated to power the in-app tip jar to support development. You can find it in the Me tab -> Edit Profile -> Buy us a coffee!

Challenges we ran into

Building as a long distance couple

Managing a long distance relationship is already a challenge in itself, but was two-fold when we combined that with trying to build a project together. Not only did we have to learn to balance and carve out project time to keep it from taking over all our FaceTime calls, but also we were learning how each of us liked to work, and how to communicate disagreements (especially since building a passion project makes every decision feel a lot more personal!). At the end of the day, we discovered so many new sides to each other, and grew so much in our relationship to land on an end product we both love and use together every day.

Building an app to solve a phone problem

A lot of our early testers mentioned this skepticism when hearing the initial pitch. We were asking people to download one more app to spend less time on their phones. We believe that building a solution that lives on the phone is crucial, as the value prop of Nown is not in shaming all phone use, but about promoting more intentionality and bringing in the core social component. We put a lot of thought on being intentional with the design, challenging ourselves to build an experience centered around the Live Activity and Widget, so that you often don't need to open Nown at all.

Social without feeling like social media

We iterated on the sky concept a LOT to make it an ambient experience without the usual social engagement tricks (scrolling, likes, public profiles, or follower counts, etc). We landed on an experience where the sky feels fun and interactive to pan around, filled with hand-drawn stars, and provides ambient, supportive encouragement rather than a feeling of competition. We think it's engaging without being addicting, and users come back not out of guilt but out of the genuine value they get. The sky was the part of the app that went through the most iteration and was by far the most challenging to design, as we didn’t have any existing references for this type of app interaction.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A new twist on a digital wellness app

We’re most proud of designing a digital wellness app that flips the script from shaming your screen time to celebrating your time offline. Our timers always count up your total time present, and Nown’s accountability comes from seeing other people joining you together, rather than a chart or dashboard pointing out your screen time failures. It's a bit unlike anything out there today, and the combination of the nature-inspired design, unique concept, hand-drawn assets really resulted in a project that, at the end of the day, feels so personal to us.

Building in public and completing the project together

We're so proud of each other for actually bringing this project to life, and thankful to Shipaton for providing the space and motivation to ship. It's been an amazing and fun experience to put both of our skills and creative minds together to build something we're really passionate about.

Initial positive feedback from users

“"Going offline" can feel incredibly isolating, and showing who is there with you feels so... nice. And encouraging.”
— Becca

"The UI is INSANE. And it walks you through the value and need for the app so clearly. No notes. Love it 👌"
— James

“Omg I love it, everything is so thoughtfully done!”
— Lucia

“I love the theme colours + the different stars. Also looove how the widget shows the timer, this is v cool. The app overall feels very premium.”
— Anna

“it’s so cool”
— Jearvin

What we learned

We learned and grew so much throughout the whole process. From researching and iterating upon a novel concept, learning to navigate our different working styles while being in a relationship, and experiencing for the first time the process of launching and marketing a consumer product… every step in the process has been super rewarding.

Here’s a few of our top learnings:

  • People scroll because that’s the default norm. We started out thinking we were building a better app blocker, but what we discovered is that blocking is the least important part. What changes behavior is seeing that other people are doing it too, and knowing they can see you.
  • Constantly ask for user feedback. Some of our top features came directly from showing our app to the people around us. For example, the idea for adding space trash was suggested to us by a friend because the app felt too gentle and lacking in motivation to stay in a session. It eventually became a core loop of our app.
  • Keep it simple. As first time app builders, we found ourselves overcomplicating features to differentiate ourselves and make the experience unique. We discovered that it often just felt unintuitive and confusing. Not everything needs to be different, and it’s important to deliver on a concept that is also instantly understandable.
  • AI is a creativity multiplier. Having never used AI for development or design prior to this project, we often realized we were limiting ourselves based on an outdated understanding on what’s feasible. Throughout the project, we discovered that with the assistance of AI we can be so much more ambitious in bringing creative ideas to life. For example, our 3D pannable sky was initially simplified and implemented as a static screen. We revisited the decision when we noticed early testers were always trying to pan around the sky, and decided to try using AI to bring the concept to life. The end result was polished and beyond what we’d imagined. AI works at its best when it can be used as a tool to bring your own original ideas to life.

What's next for Nown: Phone Down, Together

  • Growing our community through marketing and outreach, so the sky grows larger with more phone-free moments from around the world. Gaining a critical user mass would be great for Nown, since the experience becomes more enriching the more people are on it! We’re doing a mix of our own content on socials, organic UGC through Noise platform, and cold outreach.
  • Local phone-free events hub. According to EventBrite, phone-free events are seeing staggering growth – up 567% globally. The ultimate Nown experience would be to be able to find and RSVP for these IRL events in-app, and find yourself in a roomful of others Nowning with you in person :)
  • Building what users ask for. We're prioritizing feedback from our users, including adding reminders, automations to start Nowns around your routines, and an Android version.
  • Times Square? 👀 We’re ready to book our flight to NYC!!

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