Luke — Designer & App Builder @formerlycorp

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Left your phone alone for five seconds… Would you want to know if someone opened your apps? 👀 I built Sussd — your phone keeps the receipts. Coming soon: yousussd.com

Branding applied to site. If I'm going to share this, need an actual URL. Quite impressed with the ChatGPT sites, it pretty much one shot it. Now I'm thinking we head to Cloudflare for a proper domain and share the link 🔗

Power cut yesterday. Was watching Superwall on YT. The guy was demoing an app on toxic traits… Wondered if there was a quiet way to know if someone had been on your phone while you weren’t looking. A challenge me'thinks. See how far I get without wifi/MacMini/Fridge. All iPhone

Documents rejected by Apple, needed to supply more, so still blocked. SO, more branding. Doing some prompting with Chat. Little back and forth. Got there in the end.

Process snapshot. Left: the current Rork build—some broken layout and fairly rough UI. Right: the Figma design. AI tools are brilliant for getting an idea running quickly, but there’s still plenty of iteration between a functioning prototype and a finished product.

My Apple Developer account is still tied to a company I’ve since closed, so Apple won’t let me make a clean start. I’ve submitted the requested documents and I’m waiting for verification. The app is ready—bureaucracy is the final boss.

New day, round two. Developer account still blocked - so going to have another crack at Rork.

Went to put it on my iPhone and test Apple’s activity detection properly. Hit a blocker. My developer account is still tied to an old company that no longer exists, and Apple won’t let me enrol again. So day one ends: prototype built, landing page live, Apple admin in the way.

Started thinking the app needed a little character that could tell you everything was fine, or look suspicious. I’m thinking, pixel robot. No? But like bomberman He can watch while the phone is armed, give you the all-clear when you return, or show when something triggered it.

Went through the whole thing screen by screen. Fast pass: decent Some obvious mistakes, needs simplifying, but the main journey worked surprisingly well. The bigger problem was that it still looked like a fairly standard security app. Black screen, big button, needs personailty

Time for Rork, not used it before but heard on a bunch of yt vids. Lovable for apps. Onboarding, permissions, choose apps to monitor, arming, results, timeline, history, settings and the $14.99 paywall. The detection is simulated at this stage, looks pretty snappy i must say.

At this point I had a name, rough proposition and price. Still no idea if anyone wants it. GPT makes sites, ok. Landing page with two options: “I’d test the beta” “I’d buy it for $14.99” Much more useful than asking people if they like the idea. …d-phone-privacy.amahuaca.chatgpt.site

Then looked at how it could make money. Most apps in this category use cheap weekly/monthly subscriptions, which feels a bit grim for such a simple utility. As there shouldn’t be much ongoing server cost, decided to test one free session and then $14.99 once. No sub, we test.

Started playing around with names. Canary was good but already a security brand. Seal, Trace, Sentinel and Tripwire were all taken or far too close to something else. Looked at words like sus, sussed and clocked and ended up with Sussd. Will work with it for now. Memey? Maybe.

Naming. Even if it’s a working one. Like Canary. Already a security brand. Like Seal. Already used by privacy apps. Trace and Sentinel were crowded. Tripwire was almost exactly the same idea. Good metaphor isn’t necessarily an ownable name. Obvs what’s a Spotify? Kept lookin

Ooh Found a “Don’t Touch My Phone” app with 27,000 ratings. Clearly some demand here?! But most existing apps are all: 🚨 Loud alarms 📸 Intruder selfies 🕵️ Anti-theft stuff Not really: “Was someone quietly going through my apps?” That might be the gap.

🪏Then did a bit of digging to see if anyone actually cares about this. People search: “Who touched my phone?” “Who used my phone?” “Who unlocked my phone?” But on Reddit etc. they say: “Someone went through my phone.” So definitely a real thing people worry about.

The first designs worked, but still felt like “security app UI.” So I explored stronger metaphors: • A forensic case file • A black-box recorder • A broken digital wax seal • A canary that reacts when something changes Contact Canary is the obvious standout, but played out

Next I mocked up the result screen in three completely different directions: • A timeline of detected activity • A terminal/hacking interface • A calmer premium privacy design Same information. Completely different feeling. Good. But needs a little something something

That changed how the app should talk. It can’t claim: “Someone used your phone.” It only knows that monitored app activity happened while it was armed—not who did it or why. So the responsible language is: “Activity detected.” Less dramatic. More honest.