Swiss Challenge · the app for moving with your friends
An iPhone app where steps, counted by the phone, and training logged in two taps fill one weekly score. Each group of friends votes on its own rules. Designed and built by Voren.
Visit the live site
What it is
An iPhone app for moving with your friends. Every week, Monday to Sunday, two sources fill the same score: steps, which the phone counts on its own (3 points per 1,000 steps, day by day), and training that each person logs in two taps, a set of push-ups or a kilometre run. Everyone sets a goal of 200, 500 or 1,000 points, and a week held moves you up a level.
Steps also open challenges: 10,000 steps a day for a week, solo, with friends or in the overall ranking. The ranked challenge is played for trophies, with no money involved.
The app grew out of a training log that a group of friends has kept together since May 2025. The iPhone beta is in preparation, and the waiting list is open on the app’s website.
What the project demanded
A group decides its own rules. Every week, its members vote on the exercises, what each one is worth (steps included) and the goal: proposals until Saturday 6 pm, voting until Sunday 6 pm, adopted with more yes than no votes and a third of the members voting. Without an accepted vote, the previous week’s rules carry on. These rules are written as data and tested on both sides, in the app and on the server, so that a vote counts the same way everywhere.
One rule separates what is measured from what is logged. Steps count everywhere; logged training counts in the week and in groups, never in a challenge, because a push-up logged by hand has no proof.
Steps are health data. The app asks for two separate consents, one for the step total, the other for logged training, and sends only one total per day, without location. Withdrawing the second deletes the logged training and removes the player from their groups.
What runs behind it
The app is written in TypeScript with React Native and Expo. It reads steps from Apple Health, which combines the iPhone, the Apple Watch and a Garmin watch without counting the same steps twice. The server and its PostgreSQL database run in Geneva. The app speaks German, French and Italian; its website adds English.
Why it is here
Swiss Challenge shows what a mobile app demands when it touches health: two separate consents, a server in Switzerland, rules that are voted every week and three languages to maintain. The same chain serves a sports club app or a business application.
Up close
