TotTap / Personal product / 2026
Less remembering.
More being there.
A deliberately simple baby-care app, born from one repeated question: when was the last bottle? From idea to shipped in a weekend.
The starting point
A question my wife and I kept asking.
After we had our baby, we would often ask each other when the last bottle had been. Two hours ago? Three? When he was crying, we were trying to work out what he might need: a bottle, a nappy change, a nap, or something else entirely.
I wanted a simple way to remember what had happened, without relying on either of us to hold every detail in our heads. That became TotTap: a shared record of the little things, available when we needed it.
This began with our own experience as parents, not a formal research study. The app records care; it does not diagnose why a baby is crying or tell parents what care to give.
The design principle
Less to learn.
Less to remember.
Open the app, see what happened last, log what just happened. The dashboard is organised around care actions, not charts or menus. A recent timeline keeps the detail close by.
Soft colour distinguishes care types. Clear labels do the explaining, so colour is never the only cue.
Simple by design
The decisions behind fewer taps.
Four actions. Not a control panel.
Nappy, feed, solids and nap. Large tap targets and time-since summaries put the next action and the last event together. Parents can choose which care items they need.
Ask only when the answer matters.
A nappy needs a Wee or Poo choice. Feeding may need a method. Solids and a nap start do not need a form. The number of taps follows the decision, not a fixed logging process.
Make mistakes easy to undo.
Immediate feedback, undo and editable event times let parents correct a hurried tap or record something that happened earlier, without confirming every action first.
Start with one baby, not an account.
Private, single-device tracking works without signing in. More babies and a shared care team are optional. An account becomes necessary when parents choose to share.
Beyond the app
Useful with your hands full.
Opening an app should not be the only way in. I extended the same small set of actions to the places parents can reach quickly.
iPhone app icon
Press and hold
Jump straight to a care action from the Home Screen. Where a detail is needed, TotTap opens a compact picker instead of making parents navigate the app.
Interactive Home Screen widget
Tap a widget
Log solids, a nap start or a feed with a single configured method without opening TotTap. Actions with more than one possible answer open the picker. Nothing is guessed.
Apple Watch companion
Use your wrist
See the latest care summary, log an event and get a haptic confirmation with undo. Requests are queued for later delivery when the phone cannot be reached.
These are implemented native entry points. Apple Watch physical-device validation remains part of the release work.
Refinement
Simplifying meant taking things away.
The implementation evolved towards smaller decisions. Nappy logging was reduced to two choices, Wee and Poo. Nap tracking became a start event, removing a timer that depended on remembering to stop it.
Dark mode earns its keep at 3am.
TotTap tracks baby care, but it still needs to respect the adults doing it. Dark mode supports night-time use, while opt-in reminders and quiet hours make “don’t notify me” a first-class choice. The app does not track the parents’ sleep, but that is no reason to interrupt it. Designing for the whole situation meant knowing when to help, and when to stay quiet.
Design meets engineering
A small interaction needs dependable foundations.
Save here. Share when connected.
Care events are saved locally first, so a poor connection does not block logging. Pending changes can sync with the care team when connectivity returns. Native local storage is encrypted; shared records are scoped to family membership.
One event, whichever way it arrives.
Widget and Watch requests carry stable identifiers and the selected baby. Duplicate checks protect against repeated delivery. Undo is handled even when it arrives before the original Watch log.
Built with React Native, Expo and TypeScript, with Supabase for shared data and SwiftUI, WidgetKit and WatchConnectivity for the Apple integrations.
Where it stands
Built around a real need.
Ready for the next test.
TotTap has working mobile builds, a web preview, local and shared-care flows, and native Apple integrations. Store distribution is still pending, with release validation still to complete before a public launch.
The next test is practical: can another carer find the last feed without asking, record care one-handed, and trust the history through an offline handover? That is the experience this product is designed to support.