Christopher Cifonie
All projects

Unseen Assurance A calm, private prayer journal for iPhone.

I designed Unseen Assurance as a private prayer journal for capturing prayers, returning to them, and noticing how God has moved. The experience makes room for answered prayers and those still being carried.

The name comes from Hebrews 11:1, my favorite verse, about having faith in what we hope for and cannot yet see. On the Home Screen, the app is simply Unseen.

Project Overview

Role
Solo Product Designer
Timeline
Started March 2026. In TestFlight beta.
Focus
I shaped the product, designed the journal and its visual style, and used AI to help build it in SwiftUI. Privacy and reflection guided those decisions.
Deliverables
An iPhone app with iCloud sync and Home Screen widgets, light and dark themes, a product site, a beta tester guide, and build test plans.

The Challenge

Problem

Make space to return and reflect

I wanted the journal to support what happens after a prayer is written.

  • Capture brief prayers in the moment
  • Bring older entries back into view
  • Recognize answers while making room for waiting
  • Keep personal prayer separate from public activity
Approach

A gentle path through the journal

Capture quickly. Revisit gently. Celebrate answers.

  • Arrow Prayers for one-line, in-the-moment capture
  • A Prayer to Revisit surfaces older prayers
  • Journey keeps Answered and Still Trusting side by side
  • A private experience with no feed or followers

Design Strategy: Quiet by Design

Make room for a short prayer

The Pray button offers a full entry or an Arrow Prayer: one line, with no date to pick.

A Home Screen widget opens a blank Arrow Prayer, ready to write.

Bring prayers back

A Prayer to Revisit brings an older entry back to Home with an invitation to consider whether it has been answered or is still being carried.

Marking a prayer answered invites a note about what changed, recorded in the person’s own words.

Include the prayers still being carried

Journey places Answered and Still Trusting side by side, keeping both parts of a person’s prayer life visible.

Answered entries preserve dates and reflections, creating a history to return to over time.

Keep milestones optional

Streak tracking can be turned off, giving people a choice about whether that feedback belongs in their journal.

Eight themes unlock along the way, offering visual variety as the journal grows.

Day and Night

Quiet photographs give each tab a sense of place, from an open Bible on the sand to footprints across the dunes. Dark mode uses moonlit versions of the same scenes, paired with deep navy surfaces.

The night palette carries through the app, widgets, and dark app icon. Text over the photographs also needed to remain readable.

I used automated checks to confirm text stays readable over the night photos. Accent labels in dark mode reach at least 6.7:1 contrast, and people can use Increase Contrast for stronger colors across themes.

Privacy by Design

Privacy shaped the product from the start. I kept the focus on a personal journal, with no public feed, followers, or audience.

Entries live on the iPhone and sync through the person’s own iCloud Drive. There is no Unseen Assurance server. Device authentication and PDF export support keeping the journal private and accessible to its owner.

  • No account Use the journal without creating an Unseen account.
  • Privacy Lock Face ID or your passcode, and it locks again whenever you leave.
  • No ads, no analytics The app has no advertising or usage analytics.
  • Yours to keep Export your prayers as a typeset PDF.

Where It Stands

Unseen Assurance is in TestFlight beta, with testers joining a few at a time.

Future ideas include optional reminders and organizing prayers around people.

Visit the Unseen Assurance Site

Visit the coming-soon page for Unseen Assurance.

Visit unseenprayer.app

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