Scattered context
Ideas, timing, and budgets live in different messages. The group has to reconstruct the plan.
INDEPENDENT CONCEPT / NATIVE iOS / 2026
01 — GATHERLess debating.
More together.
An iOS concept that helps friends choose a plan
with everyone’s needs in mind and room for an honest vote.
Product direction by De’Andre Perry View contribution ↗
MAKE TIME FOR YOUR PEOPLE
Good company.
One great plan.
From “what should we do?”
to “see you there.”
ACTUAL SIMULATOR CAPTURES
01 / THE OPPORTUNITY
Making a plan
shouldn’t be
the hard part.
A group chat is great for conversation. It’s a difficult place to keep track of a decision.
Gather explores how a single, focused experience can bring people’s interests, practical constraints, and honest choices together. The ambition is simple: help a group reach a plan they can act on.
Independent product concept. Designed from a product brief; not a commissioned project or a user-research study.
PROJECT
Independent concept
FOCUS
Product & UI design
PLATFORM
Native iOS · SwiftUI
DIRECTION
De’Andre Perry
THE DESIGN PREMISE
One plan.
Many moving parts.
Unspoken needs
“Anywhere works” can leave real requirements out of the decision.
A decision that drifts
More suggestions don’t necessarily create agreement. The group needs a way to choose.
These are the starting hypotheses from the brief, not findings from interviews. They define what a future usability study should test.
THE DESIGN QUESTION
How might choosing
feel as good as
getting together?
02 / THE EXPERIENCE
A little structure.
A lot less friction.
One continuous path from an open question to a shared plan. Explore the actual app screens below.
SELECT SCREEN TO ENLARGE
01 / HOME
The next step is already waiting.
The active plan leads the page. Its status and Continue Voting action make the next step clear.
DESIGN INTENT
Establish hierarchy through content and type before adding decoration.
1 / 5
03 / THE DECISIONS
Small choices.
Meaningful differences.
The interface supports the social dynamics of making a plan, as well as the practical steps.
Give the group
one next step.
Home prioritizes the active plan. The lobby places Start Voting before the recommendation list, so browsing is available without becoming a prerequisite.
Trade-off: less content up front, more direction.Make room for
an honest “pass.”
Love, Good, and Pass express different levels of interest. Aggregate results appear only after all ballots are complete; individual choices stay out of the interface.
Trade-off: wait for everyone before showing the result.A must-have
isn’t a nice-to-have.
Preferences influence ranking. Requirements determine eligibility. If required accessibility information is missing, the option is excluded rather than assumed suitable.
Trade-off: a smaller set of ideas can be the right answer.
THE DEFINING INTERACTION
A vote that
feels like
your own.
The prompt asks how the evening feels, not which venue deserves a rating. One idea at a time keeps the decision focused.
- 01 Reassure before asking. The privacy cue appears before the venue, at the moment a person forms a choice.
- 02 Make comparison easy. Name, price, distance, and match use a consistent order beneath the artwork.
- 03 Keep responses equally available. Pass, Good, and Love share a control family, with words and symbols.
The group-match score reflects shared preferences in the demo. It does not verify a venue’s accessibility or suitability.
04 / VISUAL LANGUAGE
Warm in character.
Clear in purpose.
The identity lives in the content. Familiar iOS controls give the experience its structure.
Meet in the middle.
The app icon suggests convergence: separate paths forming one shared moment.
Friday NightTitle · Bold
Continue VotingHeadline
6 people · Friday 7:00 PMSubheadline
System type.
A human voice.
Semantic iOS text styles establish hierarchy and scale with Dynamic Type. Short, conversational copy keeps the product approachable.
02 / TYPOGRAPHYForest#1F5C4D
Apricot#F5975E
Midnight#262E4D
Cream#FADEA6
Accent with intention.
Forest marks actions and meaningful emphasis. Warm illustration colors add energy. System surfaces and labels adapt to appearance.
12
16
24
32
Room to breathe.
24-point page gutters, generous section spacing, and restrained image corners. Grouping does more work than extra borders.
04 / RHYTHMType examples describe the app’s semantic hierarchy; their web rendering is illustrative. The palette samples the light accent and artwork. The app’s separate dark accent is pale green (#94D1AD); surfaces and labels use system colors.
A COHERENT EXPERIENCE, FROM IDEA TO OUTING
05 / DUO DESIGN EXPLORATION
More room.
Same plan.
A larger canvas should reveal useful context while keeping the next step familiar. An adaptive direction for Gather on iPhone Duo.
PROPOSED INTERFACE
Interactive layout study · Not a Duo Simulator capture
VOTING IN PROGRESSPrivate choices
Friday Night
The night is coming together.
- WHEN
- Fri, Sep 18 · 7:00 PM
- TOGETHER
- 6 people
5 of 6 have votedOne more voice to hear.
Fictional plans · Layout exploration
02 / EXPANDED
The plan list and selected plan sit together when space allows. On narrow previews, they stack. More context becomes visible without adding tasks or exposing individual votes.
Keep the thread.
The selected plan stays selected across layouts. A native implementation must also preserve the active vote, edits, and navigation state when moving between displays.
Reveal, don’t reinvent.
The extra pane brings the plan list into view. The same information hierarchy and next action remain available in the compact experience.
Give the fold room.
Keep meaningful content out of reserved regions. Prefer system split views and let iOS place navigation and toolbars for the current pose.
What this study demonstrates
Content hierarchy, plan-selection continuity, and a fold-aware composition. Switch layouts and select a plan to explore.
What remains to validate
Actual Duo dimensions, system vertical controls, camera regions, folding transitions, Dynamic Type, and assistive technology. The band is a schematic reserved region; system navigation chrome is intentionally omitted from these content studies.
06 / INCLUSION
Consideration is
part of the interface.
Accessibility shaped both the decision model and the way people move through it.
Light appearance · iPhone 18 Pro
Larger text.
The same complete journey.
The voting-to-confirmation flow was exercised at the largest accessibility text size, including on a smaller iPhone 17e. Primary labels get the full button width as text grows.
Meaning stays visible.
Vote choices combine labels and symbols. Selected values are exposed to assistive technology. Decorative imagery is excluded from the reading order.
Needs inform the plan.
They don’t become a label.
Individual requirements are not shown in participant summaries or included in shared invitations. The group sees eligible ideas, not a list of someone’s personal needs.
NATIVE BY DESIGN
Familiar where it matters.
Gather’s personality comes from its voice and artwork. Navigation, text, and controls build on iOS conventions.
Navigation has its own layer.
Four labeled system tabs provide stable destinations. Navigation stacks handle detail screens; a dismissible sheet contains voting. The system supplies the tab bar’s Liquid Glass appearance.
HIG: Materials ↗Hierarchy can grow with the text.
Semantic text styles scale with system settings. Voting responses can stack vertically, and primary labels receive the full available width at accessibility sizes.
HIG: Typography ↗Actions remain visible and reversible.
Voting controls have a minimum 44-point label height. Words and symbols carry meaning together. People can revisit choices before submitting; reduced-motion settings disable the voting transition animation.
Apple: Touch and interaction guidance ↗Review scope: native source, Simulator captures, and the recorded QA results, checked against Apple guidance on September 17, 2026. VoiceOver, Switch Control, Reduce Transparency, landscape, and physical-device behavior still need manual validation. The custom accent has light and dark variants; dedicated increased-contrast variants remain a refinement to validate. This is a documented alignment review, not an Apple certification.
07 / REFINEMENT
The polish is
in the follow-through.
The running app exposed details that static compositions couldn’t. These changes are documented in the implementation and QA record.
OBSERVATIONREFINEMENTWHY IT MATTERS
Secondary text was too quiet.
Strengthened secondary-text contrast after the native accessibility audit.
Supporting details remain readable without competing with the main action.
The action came after the browsing.
Moved Start Voting above the recommendation list.
The next step is available before a long scroll.
A large label needed more room.
Removed the competing icon from primary buttons at accessibility text sizes.
The label can reflow across the available width.
Confirmation inherited the scroll position.
Returned the plan to its heading when the state changes.
The result of the action is immediately understandable.
08 / OUTCOME & REFLECTION
A working idea.
A clear next
chapter.
The outcome is a functional native concept that carries a group decision all the way through to a plan.
The core journey runs offline with sample participants and venues. Creation, discovery, preferences, saved activities, and final-plan actions extend the experience beyond the central demo.
A complete decision flow, implemented.
The prototype connects private choices, aggregate consensus, and final-plan actions. Validation: 12 unit tests and 4 UI tests passed, plus two smaller-device journey runs. Recorded September 15, 2026.
This is implementation evidence, not a measure of usability or product impact. Manual assistive-technology and permission testing remain part of release QA.
Project scope, contribution & evidence
Contribution
De’Andre Perry supplied the product brief and directed the project. Codex assisted with the initial implementation, procedural artwork, sample content, testing, and case-study production.
The case study documents the product intent, implemented design decisions, and remaining validation questions.
Scope
Independent portfolio concept with fictional venues, people, and accessibility metadata. Invitations and votes are local to the demo; live collaboration, real venue providers, widgets, and Live Activities are future work.
The current build is not presented as an App Store release or as Apple-affiliated work.
Evidence
Original iPhone app screens are unretouched Simulator captures. The Duo section is an interactive web layout proposal. Native navigation and materials are supplied by SwiftUI. Automated validation is described in the project’s QA report.
GATHER