Apex Textile
The hardest hours in recovery are the ones between meetings. We built the program something a client can hold on to during them.
- 97%
- Customer Satisfaction
- 45%
- Lead Growth
- 60%
- Conversion Improvement
Overview
Renaissance Ranch runs faith-based addiction recovery programs across Utah, and the work does not stop when a client walks out of the building. They came to us with the problem stated plainly: the hardest hours are the ones between meetings, and a printed schedule on a refrigerator door is no help at two in the morning. We built the program a companion app — a daily check-in, the full group calendar, a sponsor one tap away, and a sobriety counter that keeps counting when the phone has no signal.
Our Secret Recipe
Four decisions made early, each of which cost us time in the first month and saved the project in the third.
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We listened before we specified
Two weeks of calls with counsellors and program graduates came before a single screen was drawn. The feature list we arrived at was shorter than the one we were handed, and everything left on it had someone who could say why it mattered.
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One screen the app opens to
Everything a client needs on a bad day sits on the first screen: today's check-in, the next meeting, and the call button. Nothing that could wait was allowed to compete with those three for attention.
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Offline is the normal case
Meetings happen in church basements with no signal, so the app was built assuming there is no network rather than treating that as an error state. Check-ins queue on the device and sync when the phone finds a connection.
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Built for the counsellor too
The staff side got the same attention as the client side. A counsellor can see who has checked in this week without exporting anything, which is the only reason the data has stayed current a year after launch.
Three Technical Challenges
None of these were visible in the brief. All three would have been shipped as bugs by a team that had not spoken to the counsellors first.
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Notifications that help rather than nag
A recovery app that pushes too often gets muted, and a muted app is an uninstall with extra steps. The scheduling layer respects quiet hours, collapses duplicates into one message, and sends the meeting reminder at a time the client picked themselves.
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Sobriety maths that survives a time zone
A day counter sounds trivial until a client travels, the phone changes zone and a hard-won streak resets overnight. The count is computed on the server from a fixed anchor date and rendered in the client's home zone, so the number never moves for the wrong reason.
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Private data on a shared phone
Phones get handed to family. The app opens on a neutral screen, puts nothing identifying on a lock screen notification, and asks for the device biometric before anything personal is shown.
From Idea To Launch In Four Steps
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Discovery
Two weeks with the counselling team and a group of graduates, ending in a written scope both sides had signed rather than a slide deck.
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Design
A clickable prototype of the eleven screens that mattered, tested with six clients in active recovery before any of it was built.
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Build
Six two-week sprints against one React Native codebase, with a build in the staff's hands at the end of every one of them.
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Launch
Store submission, a staged rollout through one program house at a time, and a month of daily monitoring before the team stepped back.
Solutions Offered For The Renaissance Ranch Program
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Native iOS and Android apps from a single React Native codebase
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Daily check-in flow that queues offline and syncs in the background
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Group meeting calendar with reminders each client schedules themselves
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One-tap sponsor and counsellor calling, with a discreet crisis line
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Counsellor dashboard showing check-in streaks and missed weeks at a glance
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Push notification service with quiet hours and per-client scheduling
Technologies
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Frontend
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React Native
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Backend
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Java
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Hosting
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AWS
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Mobile
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Kotlin
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AI
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OpenAI
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Our Strategy
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Ship the daily habit first
- Check-in, calendar and call button in release one
- Everything else behind a feature flag
- A build in the staff's hands every two weeks
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Design for the worst day
- Three taps maximum to reach a human
- No screen that can fail silently
- Plain language everywhere, no clinical jargon
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Measure what the program cares about
- Check-in rate, not session length
- Missed weeks surfaced to a counsellor, not a chart
- No analytics that follow a client off the app
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Hand over something they can run
- Content and schedules editable without a developer
- Staff training before launch, not after
- A support agreement with named response times
Impact Snapshot
- 500+ App Downloads
- 200+ Active Users
- 120+ Weekly Push Notifications
- 68% Daily Check-In Rate
- 4.8 Average Store Rating
- 12 Weeks To Launch
Client Testimonial
The team asked better questions than we did. We arrived with a feature list and left the first workshop with a shorter one that actually described the program. Twelve weeks later our clients had something they open every morning.
