Tempo

Overview

Tempo's founders had a proven coaching method and a spreadsheet holding them back. They needed a real app — workout plans, timers, progress photos — that felt instant in a gym with one bar of signal.

I designed and shipped the v1 to both stores in twelve weeks: a single React Native codebase, an offline-first data layer, and a coaching dashboard on the web for their trainers.

Challenge

Gym connectivity is hostile — concrete, crowds, throttled networks. Anything that required a live connection would fail mid-set and take user trust with it.

The team also needed App Store approval on the first serious attempt, with subscriptions, health-data permissions and a content pipeline their coaches could run solo.

Approach

• Offline-first sync: workouts always available, conflicts resolved on reconnect
• Native-feel timers, haptics and background audio cues
• Subscription paywall with trials, tested through sandbox end to end
• Coach CMS for plans, videos and programming without developers
• Release train with beta testers on real mid-range devices

Outcome

Tempo launched on schedule and has stayed live with strong store ratings ever since. Session completion held up through network dead zones, and the coaches publish new programming weekly without touching code.

The shared architecture decisions — one codebase, offline-first, coach-run content — kept later feature work cheap instead of compounding into rewrites.