Case Study · Studio Product
Stellar,
Native Deep Work
A native iOS focus app where deep work builds a personal universe. Every completed session places a star, planet, or nebula into a starfield you can zoom, explore, and share.
Type
iOS App / Productivity
Status
v1.1.2, in active development
Platform
iOS 17+ (iPhone + iPad)
Scope
Design + Native iOS Dev
Problem
Focus apps share the same weakness: your reward for staying off your phone is a number going up. Nothing builds up over time, nothing feels yours, and quitting costs you nothing.
Miss one day and your streak resets to zero, erasing weeks of effort
Blocking distracting apps means juggling a second tool
Progress is a statistic, not something you'd show a friend
Most competitors feel like websites squeezed into an app
Stellar's idea: make every hour of focus leave something behind. A small universe that exists only because you did the work.
Design
Your Progress Is a Place
Every finished session adds a star or planet to your own night sky. You can zoom around it, watch it fill up, and share a snapshot of it. Six levels unlock more space as you go, from Star Field to Deep Cosmos.
Surprises That Feel Fair
New discoveries arrive often enough to stay exciting and rarely enough to feel special. The rarest finds glow differently, and landing one feels like an event.
Streaks That Forgive
Life happens. Stellar banks a few free passes each month that cover a missed day automatically, so one busy evening never erases your momentum.
Calm by Design
During a session the screen darkens and goes quiet. Reminders stay polite: one gentle nudge a day, and a heads-up only when a streak is actually at risk.
Key Features
Sessions That Build a Universe
Pick 25, 45, or 60 minutes of focus. Finish, and a new star, planet, or nebula appears in your sky.
App Blocking Built In
Choose which apps go silent during a session. They unlock themselves the moment you're done.
Timer on Your Lock Screen
The countdown lives on the lock screen and the Dynamic Island, so you never need to open the app to check it.
60+ Things to Discover
Common, rare, legendary, and mythic finds, each with its own glow. A codex keeps track of everything you've found.
Streak Insurance
Free passes accumulate every month and spend themselves to protect your streak when you miss a day.
Daily Missions
Small daily goals that feed the same reward loop and keep your sessions varied.
How It's Built
Stellar is built entirely with Apple's own tools, with no third-party code at all. That's why it feels like part of the iPhone: the timer sits in the Dynamic Island, widgets live on the home screen, and app blocking uses the same system as Apple's Screen Time. Everything stays on your device.
Under the Hood
A timer you can't break
Close the app, lock the phone, let the battery saver kick in: the countdown stays exact because it's anchored to the clock itself, not to the app running.
Nothing to sign up for
No account, no cloud, no tracking. Your universe lives on your phone and nowhere else.
Your collection is safe
Every redesign of the universe ships with a migration that keeps each object you've earned exactly where it belongs.
What We Learned
Rewards have to feel earned
Too predictable feels mechanical, and too random feels unfair. Tuning that balance took more iteration than any screen in the app.
Native is the difference you can feel
The smoothness, the widgets, the lock-screen timer: none of it is possible for apps that are really websites in a shell.
Never lose what people earned
The collection is the whole point of the app. Protecting it through every update was treated as non-negotiable.