Case study / MoodHaven
Children's moods, made clear
A parent-focused iPhone app for understanding child & adolescent mental health
If this clip includes speech, a captioned version is in the results section YouTube player. Open captions with the CC control.
01 / Project description
Why it exists.
Purpose-built for my own needs supporting my 7-year-old son with undiagnosed mood and attention challenges, I built MoodHaven to help him get the diagnosis he needs to succeed.
From explorations to app store approval in 2 months (side project) while working full-time at GameGlass
Background
Existing trackers were built for adults logging themselves — or for clinics, not for a parent trying to see a week clearly at 10pm.
I needed fast capture (mood, incident, sleep, meds), a shared log with other caregivers, and a report I could hand a clinician without translating a month of memory.
02 / Process
How it came together.
Research & Planning
Wrote down problems facing my individual needs and researched existing solutions for viability and lacking features.
Conducted market research through conversations with other parents via Facebook groups, reddit and personal connections to identify additional needs outside of the ones I faced individually. Defined target audience segments and outlined key features based on user needs and market trends.
Design & Prototyping
Prototyped initial designs using Figma. These were explorations used to discover design patterns and structure for the application, as well as defining the brand/app style. After these explorations were completed I proceeded to code prototypes to emulate actual functionality.
Development & Implementation
After defining a list of requirements, I started developing the product using the following tools and libraries.
My approach was to include minimal libraries to make sure I was focusing on speed and take advantage of native functionality. When design was needed, I would create polished designs in Figma as individual components, and then allow Claude to reference these images when creating UI using Swift. After basic implementation and functionality were in, I'd refine the styles myself directly in code.
I reviewed the Swift with Claude for security and then edited it myself.
While I was doing all of this, I would work on the website using Framer to make sure I was utilizing my time effectively.
- Xcode
- Cursor
- GitHub
- Swift + SwiftUI
- Cursor
- Supabase
- Clerk
- RevenueCat
- PostHog
- Sentry
Post Implementation
Once the application was finished, I focused on marketing and promotional material for both the hackathon I entered, as well as the app store page. This included product screenshots, a promotional video and a live demo of how the product works.
Screenshots were done in Figma, the promotional video in After Effects and the demo was done using Screen Studio.
03 / Results
What it became.
Two months, nights, App Store. A caregiver team can log one child’s week and export a record for a clinician. 3rd place at Shipaton, 800+ applicants — judged on a product I built for my own house.
The film
MoodHaven film. If the film includes speech, turn on captions with the YouTube CC control.