Zenrise

Most alarm apps are built around clock time.

They tell users when something happens, but provide little context about the conditions around that moment.

Sunrise, sunset, remaining daylight, and solar events are usually treated as separate pieces of information.

Yet people experience their lives through more than numbers on a clock.

Light changes our perception of time. Days expand and contract throughout the year. Morning feels different from evening before we look at an exact hour.

I wanted to explore whether those signals could become the foundation of the experience rather than secondary information.

Zenrise brings alarms, solar events, and daily awareness into a single system designed around the rhythm of the day.

Most clock interfaces focus on the current moment.

Zenrise focuses on the entire day.

The core experience visualizes the full cycle through a circular timeline that combines daylight, nighttime, sunrise, sunset, and the user's current position.

The interface makes the day feel spatial, showing how much light has passed, what remains, and where key transitions sit within the cycle.

The circular model reinforces a simple idea: the day is not just a sequence of hours, but a recurring cycle shaped by light and darkness.

Traditional alarms are tied to fixed hours.

Zenrise introduces solar-aware alarms that can adapt to changing sunrise and sunset times throughout the year.

Users can create alarms relative to solar events instead of manually adjusting schedules as seasons change.

This creates a system that feels connected to natural conditions while preserving the reliability expected from a traditional alarm experience.

The day contains meaningful transitions beyond timestamps.

Sunrise, solar noon, golden hour, sunset, and twilight all influence how we experience light, activity, and time.

Zenrise turns those transitions into moments users can browse, understand, and optionally follow.

The goal was to make time feel connected to everyday life, not just to exact hours.

Time awareness should not require opening an app.

Zenrise extends key information through Live Activities and glanceable system surfaces, allowing users to follow the day's progression from outside the app.

Whether checking remaining daylight or an upcoming solar event, users can access important context without interrupting their workflow.

The experience was designed around quick understanding rather than continuous interaction.

I led Zenrise from concept to App Store release, covering product strategy, design, iOS development, and launch while collaborating on backend infrastructure where needed.

From the initial idea and interaction model to the final product experience, the project evolved through continuous iteration between design and implementation.

This included solar calculations, alarm scheduling, widgets, Live Activities, branding, App Store assets, and launch preparation.

Working across both product and implementation created a tight feedback loop that allowed ideas to be explored, tested, and refined directly within the app.

Zenrise began as an exploration of how solar events and daily progression could become part of an alarm experience rather than supporting information.

The result was a shipped iOS product that combines product thinking, interaction design, visual design, and engineering within a single experience.

More importantly, it became a way to explore a simple idea:

While modern life is organized around clock time, people still experience their days through cycles of light, darkness, activity, and rest.

Zenrise was my attempt to make those cycles visible again.