(01) Case study · 2024
Fieldnote
A brand and iOS app for a journaling startup that wanted writing to feel as quick as sending a text.
Client
Fieldnote
Year
2024
Services
Brand identity, iOS app design, SwiftUI front end
Team
Ines Moreau, Amara Okafor, Jonas Brandt
Live site
Client
Fieldnote
Year
2024
Services
Brand identity, iOS app design, SwiftUI front end
Team
Ines Moreau, Amara Okafor, Jonas Brandt
Live site
01 — Challenge
A blank page nobody opened
Fieldnote had a loyal beta community and a retention problem. Most people wrote two entries, then never opened the app again. Interviews with forty lapsed users pointed at the same moment every time: an empty screen, a blinking cursor and no reason to start. The existing brand did not help. It borrowed the look of a productivity tool, all grey panels and checkboxes, so journaling felt like one more task on a long list. With a seed round closing and a public launch planned for spring, the founders needed a product people came back to on day thirty, not just a nicer icon on day one. Their analytics showed a clear cliff: almost every lost writer left within the first forty-eight hours, before the habit had any chance to form.
02 — Approach
One prompt, ten seconds
We rebuilt the first minute of the app around a single daily prompt and a lock-screen widget, so starting an entry takes one tap and ten seconds. Every screen we kept had to earn its place: settings, tags and streak counters moved out of the main flow. The brand followed the product, with a warm paper palette, a custom serif for entries and a quiet interface that only moves to confirm an action. Jonas built the SwiftUI front end alongside the design work, and a TestFlight build went out every Friday to two hundred beta writers whose replies shaped the following week. We also kept a shared notebook of every prompt we tested, which writers answered and which ones they skipped.
03 — Result
A habit, not a download
Fieldnote launched with a 4.8 rating across 9,400 reviews and was featured on the App Store in its second week. Day-30 retention rose from 22% in the closed beta to 61% after launch, the number the founders cared about most. Writers started 120,000 journals in the first month, and the app passed 210,000 downloads within six months without paid acquisition. The daily prompt became the brand’s voice in marketing too, and the team now writes new prompts themselves with the tone guide we left them. A second funding round closed on the strength of those retention numbers. Reviews mention the prompt more than any other feature, and support tickets about how to start an entry dropped to almost zero.
04 — Numbers
01 — App Store rating
4.8
Across 9,400 ratings in the first quarter.
02 — Downloads
210k
In the first six months after launch.
03 — Day-30 retention
61%
Up from 22% in the closed beta.
05 — Gallery
(04) Client’s word
“They understood the app before we finished explaining it.”
Clara Lund
Co-founder · Fieldnote
etch
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