Hello! Alarm is an iOS app that allows you to wake up friends with messages, videos and voice recordings – think of it as an alarm clock meets Snapchat meets Facebook Messenger. The app connects to Facebook and Twitter and pulls a list of friends who are also using the Hello! Alarm app. Once you select a friend, you can write a message, record a video or make a voice recording that will be sent to them the next morning when their alarm goes off.

The app also tracks upcoming birthdays and events and notifies you in advance so that you can be the first person to tell your friend happy birthday or wish them good luck on the first day of their new job.

I started this project by taking a quick look at existing alarm apps and found this is a particularly crowded market. Instead of competing with numerous apps that track sleep cycles and provide highly-customizable alarm settings, I decided to explore new ways an app can wake you up feeling excited to take on the day. I thought back on mornings that were particularly happy and remembered several times I woke up to motivational and hilarious text messages from friends that I received during the night. I built upon these experiences to develop the concept for Hello! Alarm.

Once I came up with the concept for the app, I pulled out a notebook, pencil and ruler. I sketched numerous ideas for key screens, exploring different design patterns and thinking about how screen-to-screen interactions might work.

I tried to keep Hello! Alarm’s design as clean and simple as possible so the user can enjoy the app and not feel overwhelmed with options. I also thought about typical use cases for the app to find ways to improve the user experience. For example, since most people set their alarms at night before bed, I explored implementing a “night mode” option that automatically switches the UI to a darker color palette during evening hours or when the iPhone’s ambient-light sensor records a low light setting.