Creating a messaging app for couples

Creating an identity

For somes the first part of the identity was the logo, I wanted the logo to instantly show the combination of messaging and love. Since we allow the user to choose between a dark and light theme, the logo had to work in both cases.

Core values

Somes was developed according to these core values.

Inclusiveness of all, we will take an active stance for what we believe is right.
Customer focussed, the end user should always come first. At all choices we should consider if this in the best interest of the end user.
Enjoyment, we want to create a delightful experience for our end user. And give the user and their partner a space where they can enjoy each other.

Message: "Hi babe, I'll be home at 18:00 so i can cook today, waht do you want to eat today?", Text: Zoey is typing...

Adding emotions to conversations

People always say a picture can say a thousand words, which I totally agree with. Which is why Somes has a wide range of (animated) stickers build into that can be send with the click of a button.

Contains 5 stickers that are available inside of Somes displaying affection.

Ensuring safety using encryption

While privacy might not be your top priority, you probably don't want messages between you and your partner to be visible to the rest of the world. This is why Somes implements very strong encryption, that requires a key that never leaves the device and the handshake from the server. Meaning that you would only be able to decrypt the messages if you have a connection to the back-end server and have the key on your device.

For encryption we use a combination of PBKDF2 algorithm with 100.000 itterations and AES-GCM 256. This is a very strong encryption algorithm that is almost impossible to brute force.

Code snippet encrypting messages using AES-GCM

“You know a full demographic of people would use this right? I wont have to use signal anymore!”

— Evie - Early access tester

End result

While I learned a lot from this project, I decided against publicly releasing this project. This is mainly due to the risk associated with the user data, and not wanting to have the application be used for the wrong uses. This project however teached me a lot about the limitations of web, implementing encryption and the logic that goes into building a messaging service.

Want to see the code?

Since the codebase of this project is rather sensitve, it lives in a private GitHub repo. During an interview I'm able to grab the codebase to show the code of the project if desired.