A 3D chore tracker for families. The theory: make it fun to open.
If you have kids, you know the argument. It erupts at least once a day, usually near the dishwasher. "I did it last time!" "No you didn't!" "Yes I did, on Tuesday!" Nobody remembers Tuesday.
I looked for an app that would just keep track. Who did what, when, and whose turn is next. Everything I found was either designed for corporate task management, buried in ads, or so boring that no kid would ever voluntarily open it. That last part turned out to be the real problem.
A chore app only works if people open it. And kids will not open something that feels like homework. So the design question became: how do you make a utility app fun to pick up -- without turning it into a game that demands time and attention?
The answer is the cube. KubeTrak's entire interface is a 3D object you hold and spin. There's no tab bar, no sidebar, no list view. You rotate the cube, tap a face, and you're in. The cube is somewhere between a fidget spinner and a navigation model -- something a kid (or an adult) can play with for a few seconds without getting pulled into a story, a level, or a commitment. It's a little toy on your phone that happens to track chores.
The chores themselves are gamified -- XP, streaks, badges with rarity tiers, avatar customization, room decoration. But the important thing is that none of it requires sitting down for a session. You open the app, spin the cube, mark a chore done, watch the satisfying animation, and put your phone away. Ten seconds. The theory of the case is simple: make it fun to open and play around with, without imposing complicated obligations on top of the ones your family already has.
The cube in action -- spin, tap, track.
Profiles for every family member. Customizable chore lists with fair rotation. A badge vault with evolution chains -- streak badges upgrade automatically as you maintain consistency. Twenty synthesized sound effects, all built from oscillators, no audio files, all composed in C major so overlapping sounds always harmonize. An Apple Watch companion with its own 3D cube that you spin with the Digital Crown. A parent dashboard deliberately stripped of all animation -- same app, completely different emotional register depending on who's holding it.
KubeTrak has been submitted to the App Store. Fingers crossed. It's the most complete thing I've built so far -- roughly 28,000 lines of Swift across iPhone, Apple Watch, and home screen widgets -- and my family has been using it daily. That's the bar: does the family actually open it? They do.