An app for a secret society
Enigma, Concept App · UI/UX Designer
Enigma is a concept for an invite-only secret society. Members sign in with an iris scan, talk in encrypted channels, and have a biometric panic button if something goes wrong.
I designed it as a concept, with a dark and minimal UI. Security and exclusivity mattered, and I wanted it to stay easy to use.
The hard calls in a concept
A concept app is where you get to think about trade-offs without a deadline pushing you past them. Enigma had two good ones.
The first is the iris scan. It's the most secure way in, and also the one you can never take back. If a password leaks, you change it. If an iris template leaks, that person has nothing to change.
The invite is the front door, so it carries the rules. A member vouches for someone by name, the invite works once and expires in a day, and the first screen a new member sees is the society's rules, which they accept before any channel opens.
Channels forget on purpose. There are no read receipts, and each channel sets how long its messages live. A secret society's biggest risk is a phone left unlocked on a table, so the less a phone holds, the better.
The scan unlocks a key stored on the phone. The iris itself never leaves the device.
The second is the panic button, which can fail in two directions. If it goes off by accident, people stop trusting it. If it stays quiet when it shouldn't, it's useless.
Tap an outcome.
Tuning it means choosing which mistake you can live with. For a panic button, a false alarm is the cheaper one.
Sensitivity is the dial between those two mistakes. Turn it and watch them trade.
An illustration of the trade-off, not measured data: every setting buys fewer of one mistake with more of the other.
Dark and minimal wasn't only a mood. A society that meets in secret opens the app in dark rooms and public places, so the screens are low glare, show little at a glance, and keep names hidden until you're inside a channel. Exclusivity is in the flow too: there's no sign-up screen at all, only an invite and a scan.