It started with a spreadsheet

A friend shared a spreadsheet with me while I was applying for jobs. It helped me get organised, but I wanted to see at a glance which applications needed a follow-up and which had moved to interview. I built a mobile-friendly Kanban board around that workflow and wrote up the first Job Tracker build in December 2025. That tracker is still part of Lifenook today, as Career.

From a tool for me to yourOS

Conversations with friends and family showed me how often they were keeping everyday plans in several places. I rebuilt the app to give each person their own private account and added tools for habits, finances and goals. I called it yourOS. Seeing people close to me find their own uses for it gave me a reason to keep building. The question changed from which tracker to add next to what people needed to get done together.

Lifenook’s teal mark beside a floating iPhone showing Home in dark mode, with a calendar and daily progress rings.

Home brings the day’s activity and plans together on iPhone, shown here in dark mode.

Make sharing a choice

I designed Shared Spaces so people can invite someone into a specific plan while keeping their personal records private. For a weekend away, that means one place to divide up bookings and errands, agree a budget and track what each person has paid. The boundary matters just as much as the tools inside it.

Two floating iPhones showing the Shared Spaces list and project cards with budgets.

From the list of spaces to the projects and budgets inside one.

I applied the same thinking to Nook, the AI companion. It can help someone think through a goal and draft a structured plan they can review before saving. I used AI to prototype and build faster, then tested where the product could rely on it. When broad on-device planning fell short in testing, I narrowed the experiment and kept it out of the release.

The Nook bird between two dark-mode iPhones showing a 5K training plan in Nook and the Fitness dashboard.

Nook’s editable 5K plan alongside the Fitness dashboard in dark mode.

Give the product a home on iPhone and the web

I set the product direction, named Lifenook and designed its mark, rebuilt the web experience around the new identity and built a native SwiftUI app. TestFlight feedback changed small but frequent interactions, including how task rows fit on screen and how related activity is grouped. Lifenook went live on its own domain on 7 November 2026. The iPhone app is in TestFlight, where I’m still learning from how people use it.

Lifenook: From a Job Tracker to a Shared Life Organiser