Projects | Jeff S Carpenter

An iPhone app that provides peace of mind that Loved Ones are safe, across any distance.

App Store thelooopapp.com Looop vs Life360 Privacy promise

4.7App Store rating

220+registered users

50+countries with weather alerts

A typical day

Looop on an unusual day: Jeff has Unusual Health — An unusual day

Lets you know when to check in on Loved Ones living alone or far away.

Product StrategyUX DesigniOSBackendBrand

Learns each person's normal day and speaks up only when something changes: severe weather, a hospital visit, or a phone untouched all day.
Serves two users: the adult child checking in, and the independent parent who has to opt in.
Combines weather, crime, arrivals, Apple Watch health, phone use, and optional bank activity into one answer: a typical day or an unusual one.
Founded the company and built all of it solo: the app, the servers, the brand, and the marketing.
Live on the App Store with a 4.7 rating and 220+ registered users.

Looop on an unusual day, with weather alerts in the person card footers — Weather alerts

Looop design system components rendered from the app code: buttons, status indicators, card rows, and alert footers — Component Library

Designed to answer, at a glance: "Do I need to check in on a Loved One?"

Interaction DesignDesign SystemsOnboardingAccessibility

Problem: family apps show a live map, but the real question is whether to call. Looop stays quiet unless a day breaks from that person's normal.
Two users: the adult child wants reassurance, and the Loved One opts in, can turn off any alert, and can leave with one tap.
Key decision: one fixed-order list with a green or orange ring and a one-line reason, so cards never move while you read.
Hardest flow: iOS permissions. Setup shows what to tap behind each system dialog and resumes after iOS closes the app; 78% finish it.
Measured and iterated: the funnel showed inviting a Loved One was the biggest drop-off, so it became the next priority.
Craft: a token-based design system, 44-point targets, Reduce Motion support, and a test that blocks off-system styles.

Built with

Flutter
Dart
Swift
Node.js
Express
PostgreSQL
Google Cloud
Firebase

Stack

Code: 35,400 lines of Dart, 4,100 of Swift, 22,800 of Node
Data: Postgres, about 47 tables, 37 migrations
Tests: About 490 across the app and server

An iPhone app and backend I built and run myself.

Systems ArchitectureCost OptimizationBackground LocationHealthKitStoreKit

Initial stack: Flutter with Swift for location, health, and subscriptions, on Firebase Cloud Functions and Firestore, where each location update set off a chain of database reads and writes.
Version 2 stack: Node and Express on Cloud Run as an API and a queue worker, PostgreSQL on Cloud SQL, 26 scheduled jobs, and Firebase for sign-in and push.
Cut server cost by about 65%, after finding the database was 88% of the bill.
Stays location-aware in the background, after a force-close, and after a restart, using geofences, visit monitoring, and silent pushes.
iOS permissions management: Apple Health, Push Notifications, Core Motion, Location, Contacts, and the Photo Library.
Detects airport, hospital, and police station arrivals worldwide, using 48,081 airport boundaries.

From the press kit

A brand the parent being invited can trust.

PositioningMessagingVoice & ToneVisual Identity

Needed to stand apart in a crowded field: Life360, Apple Find My, Google Family Link, and Snap Map for location, and Medical Guardian and Lively for older adults.
Positioned Looop as a safety notifications app, not a tracker, priced at less than half of Life360's comparable plan.
Built the brand for the parent as much as the buyer: "Peace of mind for you, independence for them."
Made privacy the promise: no ads ever, data never for sale, alerts instead of a map, and leave anytime.
Told the story through moments that matter, such as a storm near Mom or an arrival at the hospital, instead of dots on a map.
Built a press kit: the icon and wordmarks in SVG and PNG for light and dark backgrounds, plus seven App Store screens.

App Store listing, screens 1 to 4

Video ads that ran on Facebook and Instagram

Tested the message with real ad money before scaling it.

Paid SocialCreative TestingSEO & AI SearchPR

Ran multiple paid social test campaigns on Facebook and Instagram, testing static and video ads across weather, crime, and arrival themes.
Monitored the leaders by cost per install, and kept adjusting copy, content, and media type based on what won.
Iterated until the ads reached a 2.78% click-through rate on 48,492 impressions, with 78% of installs finishing setup.
Optimized the onboarding funnel, so more of the people who install go on to invite a Loved One.
Wrote 15 articles for the website, such as "How to Check on Aging Parents" and "Tracking vs. Knowing," plus a long-distance caregiving research report, built for search and AI answers.
Wrote six press releases for a launch press week, covering the launch, weather alerts in 50+ countries, spending alerts, and a pledge that family data is never ad inventory, with a newsroom and media kit.

At a glance

Company: LooopApp LLC, Austin, Texas
Model: Free app, plus Looop Plus with a free trial
Hosting: About $100 a month
Users: 220+ registered

Running a self-funded subscription company alone.

Unit EconomicsLegal & PrivacyVendorsFundraising Prep

Formed LooopApp LLC and set up the domain, support inbox, and Apple developer account.
Published the privacy policy, user agreement, and privacy promise, and built consent logs and full account deletion.
Signed data providers for crime, weather in 50+ countries, NASA wildfire data, and Plaid.
Built the unit-economics model: ads pay back if about 3.3% of installs become a paying family for a year.

Real postcards in your own handwriting, sent from a phone without stamps or a mailbox.

pen2post.com @pen2postmark Art gallery Travel Tuesday

$3.99per card, postage incl.

:30to send a card

1,759pieces of art to choose from

The pen2post home page: handwritten postcards from anywhere to anywhere — The home page: the promise, the price, and three steps.

A blank postcard with Add Your Handwritten Note and Add an Address, beside a phone photographing a pagoda — Add a note, an address, and your own photo

Sends a real postcard in your own handwriting, from anywhere.

Product StrategyMobile UXServerlessBrandMarketing

Photograph a note on any paper and pick a photo for the front, and pen2post prints and mails a real postcard.
Prints the handwriting as written, wobbles and all, instead of turning it into typed text.
Takes about 30 seconds in a phone browser, with no account and no app.
Runs payment, printing, mailing, retries, and refunds on its own.
Live at $3.99 a card with postage, mailed from the UK or the US.

A blank postcard to fill in — Start on a blank card

The original note next to the cleaned-up version — Clean it up

The back of the card with what is still needed — See what's left

Five design options for making the switch between Free Artwork and My Photo easier to find — Five ways to make the photo switch louder

Designed to take a traveler from scribble to send in about 30 seconds.

Mobile UXFlow DesignPrint DesignAnalytics

Problem: travelers like sending postcards but give up hunting for stamps and a mailbox, so the whole job had to fit in a phone browser.
Users: people on vacation, on slow hotel Wi-Fi, often one-handed, so there is no account, no app, and email only at payment.
Key decision: one postcard you fill in and flip over, with a line that says what's still needed, instead of a step-by-step wizard.
Ran unmoderated user tests on the entire flow, from scribble to send, and explored five ways to make the photo switch easier to find.
Designed for paper: nine border styles that still look right when the printer's cut is 3 mm off.
Measured, then iterated: analytics show where people stop and which tools they use, without storing personal data.

Built with

HTML5
CSS3
JavaScript
Cloudflare
SQLite
Stripe
Claude
GitHub Actions

Stack

Code: 3,600 lines of API; 8,300 of front-end JavaScript
Data: D1 (SQLite) and R2 storage; 10 migrations
Tests: 122: unit, Workers runtime, and end to end

A print-and-mail business that runs on its own.

ServerlessPaymentsImage ProcessingAI ModerationSecurity

Stack: plain HTML, CSS, and JavaScript in the browser, which draws the print files, and a Cloudflare Worker that holds the secrets, prices, and orders.
Prevents duplicate payment webhooks from printing two cards: one conditional update claims each order.
Routes each order to the printer in the right region, UK or US, based on where the card is going.
Retries failed prints and refunds automatically on the third failure.
Moderates both sides with Claude before payment, and stops the order if the check can't run.
Removes paper folds in the browser without erasing the words on them.
Stores API keys encrypted and swaps them without a redeploy.

Palette and type

navyorangepinkgreencream

Dear Mum,Caveatpen2postBricolage Grotesque

Your handwriting, not a font: a brand built to stand apart from TouchNote.

PositioningCompetitive AnalysisLogo & MarkMotion

Positioned against TouchNote, the biggest app postcard brand (since 2008, 15 million+ cards), on three differences:
- Real handwriting, not a font: TouchNote prints typed messages, and its "handwritten" option is a font. pen2post prints your own ink.
- No app, no account, no subscription: a card takes about 30 seconds in a phone browser, with no download, login, or plan first.
- Moments, not occasions: the quick note written at the gate or on a receipt, not a card for every birthday and holiday.
Studied TouchNote's Instagram ads and set rules from them: show the pen, never a keyboard; lead with the back of the card; never fight their catalog.
Drew the postmark printed on every card and built an animated wordmark, so the brand arrives in the mailbox.

Instagram posts

Carousel: You can write a postcard on literally anything

Post: Same price, very different lifespan

Reels

Turning travel photos into postcards, contest entries, and word of mouth.

Social StrategyInfluencer MarketingContestsContent

Built an Instagram plan: 30 days of reels, carousels, and posts, plus 60 educational carousels on postcard history, every fact sourced.
Wrote scripts that produce and score each reel and carousel before it posts, and reviewed what worked each week.
Created Travel Tuesday, a weekly photo contest with official rules and five winners a week.
Created a 121-creator influencer campaign, with a free card and a trackable 50%-off code for each.
Built a customer content loop: every caption invites people who get a card to post it with #MailedByPen2Post.

Admin analytics: button click rate, time on page, bounce rate, daily traffic, and which button gets the click — Landing page analytics

Admin analytics: what goes on the front, text, delivery, and the tools people use — Feature usage

Admin: creating a discount code with percent or dollars off, dates, and a use limit — Discount codes

A pay-per-card business that runs without staff.

AnalyticsPricingFulfillmentLegalPayments

Built an admin site for API keys, orders, analytics, discount codes, API usage, a self-test, messages, and debugging.
Hand-rolled a full first-party analytics suite that traces each customer journey: sections seen, buttons pressed, every step of the order flow, time per step, errors, and tools used.
Charts the funnel and its fallout, conversion by device, and scroll depth, with no third-party trackers, no names, addresses, or IPs stored, and Do Not Track honored.
Priced cards at $3.99 to the US or UK with postage, through Stripe with Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Set up automatic alerts for crashes, stuck orders, payment disputes, and low printer balances.
Drafted the terms, privacy, and refund policies, and wrote the official contest rules.
Screened every image for rights in both the US and UK, and built a library of 1,538 vintage posters.

Chrome Web StoreBrowser extension

Trust Turtl

A Chrome extension that tells you how much to trust the page you're reading.

Chrome Web Store trustturtl.com Install guide

6areas checked on every page

1 clickto a score out of 10

$29a year, with free daily scans

Trust Turtl scoring a product page 6 out of 10

Checking a page takes ten minutes and five tools. Most people skip it.

ProductUXApplied AIEngineeringBrand

Checks ownership, AI-written text and images, claims, reviews, and safety in one click.
Weighs the checks against each other and returns a score out of 10 with the evidence.
Marks suspicious images right on the page.
Live on the Chrome Web Store with a yearly plan and free daily scans.

Trust Turtl scoring a news article 8 out of 10 — A news story scored 8 out of 10, with six areas of evidence.

A complicated judgment, readable in seconds.

Interaction DesignProgressive DisclosureVisual Design

Shows a score, one word (Trustworthy, Mixed, or Not trustworthy), and six rows that open to the evidence.
Turns the toolbar turtle green, orange, or red, so the answer shows before the popup opens.
Outlines suspect images on the page: red for strong evidence, orange for a suspicion.
Fills in each row as its result arrives, instead of making people wait behind one spinner.

How it flows

Popup
Service worker
Streamed request
Signals run in parallel
Gated Claude and image model
Scores stream back

Stack

Stack: Manifest V3; Firebase Cloud Functions
AI: Claude Sonnet and Haiku; a self-hosted image model
Size: 4,300 lines of extension; 7,200 of backend

A parallel analysis pipeline built to cost cents a scan.

Chrome ExtensionsFirebaseClaude APIImage Models

Runs cheap local checks first, and AI only behind a gate.
Streams results as they finish; closing the popup cancels the work on the server.
Grows its own tracker list: Claude labels up to 50 unknown trackers an hour.
Catches lookalike web addresses and links that hide their real destination.
Serves settings from the server, so most changes skip Chrome Web Store review.

Shoppers

Renters

Parents

Students

A friendly mascot for a serious product.

NamingMascotPositioningPersonas

Named the product and designed the turtle to double as its status light.
Wrote the taglines "Check Before You Trust" and "The Trust Check for the Internet."
Built the site around four audiences with specific worries, such as faked rental photos.
Taught the problem with side-by-side examples of real and AI-made text and photos.
Wrote the store listing for search and a guided install page.

At a glance

Model: 3 free scans a day
Price: $29 a year through Stripe
Cost control: Cheap checks first; AI behind a gate
Build: Designed and shipped in two days

Publishing, pricing, and keeping each scan profitable.

PricingUnit EconomicsStore CompliancePayments

Prepared the Chrome Web Store submission: a single purpose, a reason for every permission, and data disclosures.
Set up Google sign-in and Stripe, with a verified webhook that starts a subscription on payment.
Tracked cost per scan, and flagged any change that adds AI spend.
Wrote the privacy policy, and built a contact form and an in-extension report form.
Set up a beta tester list that unlocks unlimited scans without a release.

LiveSubscription service for contractors

Intelligence Inbox

Weekly market data that shows small HVAC contractors where the work is in their city.

intelligenceinbox.com Austin page

18metros with live HVAC data

3trades: HVAC, pools, and solar

$49a month

The Austin HVAC page: a ZIP-code permit heat map, a competitor leaderboard, a job-type chart, and review rankings

Big contractors pay for market data. Small ones guess.

ProductData EngineeringDesign SystemsPositioning

Turns public permit records into which neighborhoods are busy, who's winning the work, and who's hiring.
Reaches contractors early: homeowners usually buy within 30 to 90 days of filing a permit.
Costs $49 a month, compared with $1,000-a-month enterprise tools or shared leads.
Live for HVAC in 18 metros, and for pools and solar in 9 cities each.

The Austin page for HVAC, pools, and solar, side by side — One template, three trades: only the accent color changes.

One design system for every city and every trade.

Design SystemsData VisualizationDesign QA

Built every page from one reference page, with only three color values changing by trade.
Wrote a script that checks every page against 60+ rules before it ships.
Made thin-data charts say so instead of showing a misleading number.
Designed the subscriber dashboard: insights, a hot ZIP map, competitors, hiring, and CSV export.
Checked every text color against WCAG AA in light and dark themes.

How it flows

City permit portal
Python collector
Raw CSV
Permit data file
Trend and hiring signals
City pages and dashboard

Stack

Sources: 25+ collectors: Socrata, ArcGIS, CKAN, and custom
Size: About 60,000 lines of Python
Tests: 146 pytest tests and a daily live-site test

A pipeline that turns messy city permit data into a weekly product.

PythonWeb ScrapingSupabaseGitHub Actions

Falls back to a downloaded export when a city's system breaks, and flags the delay instead of going quiet.
Hides averages with too little data, and anything older than seven days.
Has Claude draft market insights, then a second pass marks each claim supported or not.
Handles payment through Stripe and sign-in through Supabase, with one active login per account.
Runs city launches through 11 custom Claude Code workflows, with a checkpoint at each step.

Palette and type

baseHVACpoolssolartext

PERMITS MOVEDArchivo Black

Intelligence, not leads, for owner-operators.

PositioningBrand ArchitectureCold EmailLocal SEO

Positioned it between shared-lead sellers and $1,000-a-month enterprise tools.
Created a brand pattern that grows by trade: [Trade] Intelligence Inbox, at one flat price.
Designed a field-report identity: dark, plain, and safety orange.
Made every city page a conversion page, with tracked sign-up forms.
Verified and loaded about 25,000 contractor emails into 27 city campaigns, paused for warmup.

At a glance

Price: $49 a month or $490 a year
Guarantee: 30-day money back
Plan: About $1M a year, run solo
Markets: 18 HVAC metros; 9 each for pools and solar

A lean subscription business with written rules for what to build next.

Business PlanningMarket SelectionEmail InfrastructurePayments

Wrote the business plan and 17 product tenets.
Set a feasibility gate for every city; Houston, Dallas, and parts of Arizona failed and were logged.
Set up Google Workspace and six sending mailboxes on two domains.
Set up SPF, DKIM, and DMARC, a 14-day warmup, and a daily bounce check.
Wrote the privacy policy and terms, and set up Stripe billing and Supabase.

In bookstoresBook · Author and publisher

Hey, UX! Hey, PM!

A flip book about how designers and product managers can work better together.

heyuxheypm.com Amazon BookPeople Bookshop.org Barnes & Noble

242pages

2books in one

9retailers in 3 countries

The printed book on a cafe table, showing both covers

Designers and PMs often see each other as obstacles. This book is for both.

WritingBook DesignSelf-Publishing

One half speaks to UX designers. Flip it over, and the other half speaks to product managers.
Gives each side ten things the other wants them to know, one illustrated idea per chapter.
I wrote, illustrated, designed, and published it, and built its website.

Chapter page: UX is more than design — #1 UX is more than design

Chapter page: sharing goals — #3 Sharing goals

Chapter page: know the business — #7 Know the business

An interior text page with a boxed pull quote — Pull quote page

Design earns influence by understanding the business.

UX LeadershipCollaborationMentoring

Opens the UX half with "UX Is More Than Design. It's Problem-Solving."
Covers sharing goals, how the business makes money, and talking about design in results.
Shows product managers how bringing design in early lowers risk and speeds delivery.
Ends with 31 ideas for working with design and 32 ways to be a better UX designer.

Inside: 31 Ideas to better collaborate with Design — Badges that sell each half.

Inside: 32 Ways to be a better UX Designer — Badges that sell each half.

Relaunched the book's Instagram around what the data showed.

Instagram StrategyContent AuditVideo

Audited 85 posts: real-book, milestone, and review posts did 5 to 15 times better than quote cards.
Relaunched around Reels starring the two cover characters, each with its own voice.
Wrote a brand guide in which color says who a post is for.
Set eight rotating post types, each with a job: share, save, or buy.
Wrote the sales line: "Your craft is only 50% of your job. This book is the other half."

At a glance

Format: 242-page paperback, two books in one
Publisher: Independent, with my own ISBN
ISBN: 979-8-218-59877-8
Distribution: IngramSpark; nine retailers in three countries

Publishing a book without a publisher.

Self-PublishingDistributionWeb

Bought the ISBN and registered as the publisher of record.
Set up IngramSpark for printing and wholesale distribution.
Placed the book with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, BookPeople, and others, plus Bokus in Sweden and laFeltrinelli in Italy.
Registered heyuxheypm.com and moved it to GitHub Pages.

Shown at Burning ManInteractive sculpture

The Divine Hand

A chrome hand that seems to float 10 feet above the desert and gives one person at a time a private message.

Watch the reel @thedivinehandsculpture Project site

10 ftabove the ground

5languages

1,500lights that follow each visit

On the playa at Burning Man.

Something private and personal in the middle of a crowded festival.

SculptureExperience DesignSoftwareElectronicsFundraising

Step under the hand, and a spotlight fades up while a touchscreen asks for a birth date and place.
Each visitor gets a short reading, a guided breath, and a song chosen for them.
A directional speaker keeps the sound inside the beam of light.
Afterward, Let's Dance! turns the hand into a dance floor with music-reactive lights.
I sculpted, designed, coded, wired, and funded it myself, and it was well received at Burning Man.

Welding the steel post inside the foam — Welding the post

Primer and hardener before the chrome — Primer

The mirror chrome finish — Mirror chrome

Carved by hand from five blocks of foam.

SculptureFabricationFinishing

Carved five 4 x 4 x 8 foot foam blocks, then built up the form with clay and expanding foam.
Built a steel and PVC frame inside, on a diamond-plate steel base.
Finished it in mirror chrome over automotive primer, so it reflects the desert and the people below.
Hid the supports so the hand appears to hover.

The visit

Step under the hand
The spotlight fades up
Birth date and place
A short reading
A guided breath
A song chosen for you
Let's Dance!

A short ritual, paced for one person.

Experience DesignTouchscreen UILocalization

Paced questions one line at a time, with pauses, like a scene.
Ended the guided breath arms out, palms up, before a song with a line meant just for the visitor.
Designed for dust and sun: no scrolling, big buttons, and scroll-wheel dates.
Made the screen reset on its own when someone walks away.
Offered it in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Hindi, and Arabic.

How it flows

Touchscreen
Kiosk app
Astrology API
Claude: reading and 10 songs
Lyrics and Spotify check
Song plays; lights follow

Stack

App: JavaScript on a local Node server; Chrome kiosk on a Mac mini
Size: About 9,500 lines of JavaScript
Tests: An 85-check automated suite

A kiosk app built to run unattended in the desert.

JavaScriptClaude APISpotifyKiosk Software

Retries chart lookups four times, then stops with a clear message rather than invent a reading.
Logs each visit as it happens, so a power cut loses nothing.
Diagnosed Spotify failing inside a desktop wrapper, and moved the app to Chrome kiosk mode.
Built a phone remote that reaches the piece from anywhere through a secure tunnel.
Restarts on its own after a power cut, along with the server, tunnel, and lights.

The hand installed on the playa — Installed on the playa.

Lights and sensors I built and programmed.

ESP32LED LightingSensorsNetworking

Programmed an ESP32 with two radar sensors to fade the spotlight up when someone is underneath.
Made about 1,500 LEDs on five strips follow each step of the visit and breathe with the visitor.
Ran the lights on their own wired network, reacting to music in 16 frequency bands.
Updated the spotlight board's firmware over the network, so the sealed box stays closed.
Planned generator power, satellite internet, and a sealed box against the dust.

At a glance

Funding: Itemized donations through Stripe
Power: Off-grid generator
Internet: Satellite
Services: Astrology data, Claude, and Spotify

Getting a sculpture funded, connected, and to the desert.

LogisticsVendorsPaymentsPower

Set up the project site, its domain, and Stripe links for every item.
Opened the astrology, Claude, and Spotify developer accounts the kiosk runs on.
Planned the playa logistics: fuel containment, dust protection, and satellite internet.
Took the finished piece to Burning Man.

Six projects I designed, built, and launched on my own.

Lets you know when to check in on Loved Ones living alone or far away.

Designed to answer, at a glance: "Do I need to check in on a Loved One?"

An iPhone app and backend I built and run myself.

A brand the parent being invited can trust.

Tested the message with real ad money before scaling it.

Running a self-funded subscription company alone.

Sends a real postcard in your own handwriting, from anywhere.

Designed to take a traveler from scribble to send in about 30 seconds.

A print-and-mail business that runs on its own.

Your handwriting, not a font: a brand built to stand apart from TouchNote.

Turning travel photos into postcards, contest entries, and word of mouth.

A pay-per-card business that runs without staff.

Trust Turtl

Checking a page takes ten minutes and five tools. Most people skip it.

A complicated judgment, readable in seconds.

A parallel analysis pipeline built to cost cents a scan.

A friendly mascot for a serious product.

Publishing, pricing, and keeping each scan profitable.

Intelligence Inbox

Big contractors pay for market data. Small ones guess.

One design system for every city and every trade.

A pipeline that turns messy city permit data into a weekly product.

Intelligence, not leads, for owner-operators.

A lean subscription business with written rules for what to build next.

Hey, UX! Hey, PM!

Designers and PMs often see each other as obstacles. This book is for both.

Design earns influence by understanding the business.

Two audiences, two colors.

Relaunched the book's Instagram around what the data showed.

Publishing a book without a publisher.

The Divine Hand

Something private and personal in the middle of a crowded festival.

Carved by hand from five blocks of foam.

A short ritual, paced for one person.

A kiosk app built to run unattended in the desert.

Lights and sensors I built and programmed.

Asking people to fund real parts, not abstract tiers.

Getting a sculpture funded, connected, and to the desert.

Let's build the next one together.