Project

Stille

Product design

Android app

UX writing

2025

Client

Stille, an Android app that holds back notifications, Berlin

78%

of new installs finished setup in the first 30 days, up from 31% in the beta

34 s

median time from install to the first held notification, September 2025

Live site

Visit live site

The brief

Stille was built by four engineers in Kreuzberg in 2023 and had a waitlist of 20,000 before it had a designer. Testers praised the idea in their feedback and then left during setup: nine screens of permissions and preferences before the app had held back a single message. Sofia Chen joined as product lead with a first release booked for September 2025, and asked for an onboarding people would finish and a reason to open the app the next day.

The idea

Three questions now, the rest when it means something. Setup asks which apps may always reach you, what time the summary should arrive and whether to start straight away. Every other setting waits for its moment: when a group chat floods for the first time, Stille asks whether that chat should wait too. We tested the prototype with forty people in Berlin and Ghent and changed the order of the questions twice before anyone wrote code.

Setup

Three screens, one question each, with answers suggested from what the phone already knows, so calls and the people you message most are ticked from the start. Android’s permission prompts come one at a time, straight after the question that needs them.

Quiet until the summary

While Stille holds things back, the phone shows one thing: when the summary arrives, and who can still get through.

Stille quiet until 18:00 on a phone lying on a rust boucle armchair

The summary

Held notifications arrive together at the time you chose, grouped by person rather than by app. It follows Material 3’s type scale and shapes, so on a recent Android phone it looks like part of the system, and on a tablet it opens as one page.

Stille’s summary of 23 held notifications on a phone leaning on a velvet cushion

Stille’s summary opened on Lena’s messages, on a phone standing in a velvet sofa

Stille’s summary on a tablet lying on a velvet cushion

Stille’s summary on a tablet leaning in a boucle armchair

Stille’s summary on a phone leaning in a rust boucle armchair

Asking at the right moment

Choices come up when they become useful: the first flood from a group, the first call from an unknown number, the first Saturday. Each asks one question with two answers and never comes back once answered.

Stille asking whether a busy group chat should wait, on a phone on a wool throw

The download page

The site makes the same promise in one sentence and shows the three setup questions before anyone installs.

The Stille download page on a laptop on a rust boucle armchair

Stille’s three setup questions on a laptop on an oak coffee table

Stille’s three setup questions on a laptop on a cobalt velvet sofa

What changed

Stille 1.0 went out on Google Play on 9 September 2025, built from screens that had already been through two rounds of tests. In its first month most new users finished setup, and their phones went quiet within about half a minute of installing.

Credits

Okapi: Helena Matos (lead designer), Nuno Ferraz (product design), Marta Lobo (setup questions), Ricardo Sousa (Android components)
Stille: Sofia Chen (product lead), Jonas Keller (Android lead)
With: prototype tests recruited and moderated by Rita Gomes, Ghent

Client

Stille, an Android app that holds back notifications, Berlin