Tunto

An ADHD planner built around the hardest part — actually beginning.

Soon on the App Store

Role:: Solo Product Designer and SwiftUI builder — research, UX/UI, brand and implementation
Challenge:: Most planners assume you are ready to plan. Opening a long task list can add pressure instead of helping.

Two tilted phones showing Tunto’s launch screen and Friday planner on a violet gradient.

Planners organised the day, not the start

I reviewed the planners and ADHD tools used in the exploratory conversations. The pass was directional and the competitor count was not recorded; the repeated gap was clear enough to frame the product.

Planning
Lists, priorities and calendars were well covered.
Starting
The transition into work had no dedicated moment.
Pressure
Streaks and scores could turn support into judgement.

Starting is the product

Tunto is a quiet daily planner for the days when the hardest part isn’t finishing a task, but starting it. No “become 10x more productive,” no pressure. Just making that first step a little easier.

A word about the name: Tunto means “feeling” or “sense of touch” in Finnish — and that’s exactly what I wanted the app to be about: not stats and streaks, but how the very start of anything feels.

People needed help starting, not another planner

Tunto began with a pattern I knew firsthand: I could choose a task, make a plan and still spend 20 minutes not starting. Remote creatives and freelancers described the same problem. These were exploratory conversations, not a clinical study, and I did not record a participant count. The apps I reviewed organised the day but did not help with the 5 minutes before work began. That became the brief: help someone start, not build another list.

01
The problem is not the plan. Someone who is stuck often already knows what to do. Tunto helps them begin instead of asking them to organise more.
02
Seeing the full list while already overwhelmed adds pressure. Tunto shows one task now and folds the rest away.
03
Streaks and scores can turn support into judgement. Reminders are off by default, missed days are never counted and every permission is optional.

Research to a working iOS app

Exploratory conversations — remote creatives and freelancers who struggle to start tasks, on where the day stalls and what they do about it
Competitor analysis — what planners and ADHD apps offer in the 5 minutes before starting
Product definition — framed the job as helping someone begin, not organising the whole day
Flows and states — 8 core flows, 25 screens
Wireframing — planner, assistant and focus in lo-fi, before a single colour was picked
Interface design — planner, assistant, focus, task forms, notifications and settings, light and dark
Character and identity — Tunto the blob, 6 app icons, the colour system the day runs on
UX writing — every word on screen, from the onboarding questions to the FAQ sheet
SwiftUI build — the whole app, local-first with no backend, plus a Live Activity and a Today widget

Colour carries the time of day

Time of day is the only grouping in the planner, and colour carries it: warm in the morning, cool by evening, a neutral band for anything with no hour on it.

Lime stays out of that scale. It is the one colour that means act — Start, Continue, the control you are meant to touch.

#EAE5DA Tasks with no hour — a neutral band outside the day’s rhythm
#F7D45A Morning tasks — the warmest point in the day’s colour sequence
#8FD3E8 Afternoon tasks — a cooler cue as the day moves on
#BCADF2 Evening tasks — the coolest end of the day’s sequence
#B9F621 The action to take now — Start, Continue and the control meant to be touched

From stuck to a small step

01 First launch
02 Name what’s hardest
03 Empty your head
04 One thing today
05 Focus session
06 Close the day

3 changes made starting easier

I reviewed the working SwiftUI build against one question: once work begins, does the app get out of the way? This was a self-review, not participant testing.

01

BeforeOpening on the task list

AfterOpening on a single stuck-entry prompt

WhyA long list could make starting feel harder; the prompt reduces that first decision.
02

BeforeA cloud sync backbone

AfterFully local, offline, private by default

WhyThe design prioritised trust and calm over sync; local also made the app faster and quieter.
03

BeforeA neutral productivity tone

AfterA blob companion with real personality

WhyThe differentiator is how beginning feels; personality carries that transition without turning it into a score.

User flow

Name the block, start small

The full first run: start, sign in, name how you’re stuck, get a plan smaller than the day and land a first tiny win. Reminders stay optional; the paywall comes after value.

01 Hold to begin The first screen asks for one small physical action: hold to begin. Nothing to read, nothing to configure — the whole screen is the button.
02 Sign in with Apple Sign-in comes first and is required — Tunto uses your Apple ID for the subscription, and says so plainly: nothing else leaves the phone.
03 Name what’s hardest 4 non-clinical ways of describing being stuck. The answer changes the plan the next screen builds.
04 The plan it gives back Anchor, a 5-minute start, an energy check. The whole method fits on one screen — and promises less than the day, not more.
05 A name to greet you A name for the greeting, prefilled from Apple when it hands one over. Cosmetic and editable — never a required field.
06 Pick a first win The first win should be almost too small to resist — a glass of water, an open window, a stretch. One tiny physical action to break the seal.
07 Allow one nudge A tap on the shoulder, not another inbox. “Not now” is a real answer: onboarding finishes either way, the switch waiting in Settings.
08 Choose a plan The paywall arrives only after onboarding has made the case: yearly, monthly or lifetime, with 14 days free.

User flow

Brain dump to first steps

From a head full of everything to one task with its first step written: open the composer, dump it all, then open a task and let the app suggest the breakdown.

01 Open the composer The home screen is a composer, not a list. Quick starts sit under it for the days when typing the first line is too much, and the blob that greets you changes every time you land here.
02 Brain-dump everything Type or dictate everything competing for attention, 1 line or 10. Tunto splits the dump into tasks, asks when they belong and writes the first step for you.
03 Add or edit the task The title is the only thing asked for. The first visible step is written the moment you type one, saved with the task and editable; priority, date, duration, repeat and alarm sit under Details.
04 The app suggests the steps Tap “Suggest breakdown” and the assistant proposes these sub-tasks — added by the app, not typed by you. Each stays editable, and you can remove any before saving.

8 core flows, built in SwiftUI

25 screens planning, focus and end-of-day review in one app
Live Activity the focus timer stays visible outside the app
Full brand a blob mascot, 6 app icons, a colour system

What I learned

A calmer start mattered more than a longer feature list.
Building it in SwiftUI exposed problems the mockups missed.

CaTarot Design + build · AI-assisted Scale Product design · design system