About

A design-led studio making apps with more care than usual.

Unathi Studios is a design and engineering studio in London. We design and build mobile and web apps — our own products, and work for clients across categories — with the belief that how something is made shows in how it feels to use.

01

Who we are

We create human-centred digital products — thoughtful, beautiful, research-informed, and respectful of people and their data. We begin from real needs: calm pacing, patient interfaces, and choices where dignity and agency weigh as much as any metric.

02

Why we exist

Too much software uses the language of care while relying on patterns built for attention capture: streak pressure, intrusive notifications, endless feeds, vague claims and unnecessary data collection.

We believe products should be built differently. They should be useful, beautiful, trustworthy, and grounded in a serious understanding of the people they serve.

03

How we build

Every project begins with a human question, not just a feature idea. Before we draw a screen we sit with a short list of them:

  1. What does this person need in this moment?
  2. What does the research actually suggest?
  3. What are existing products getting wrong?
  4. Could this feature create pressure, dependence, shame or confusion?
  5. What data is truly necessary?
  6. How should the experience feel?

The same people carry the answers from research into design and into code. It keeps products calmer, more useful and more respectful of the people using them.

04

Evidence & criticism

Product categories are full of strong claims and weak foundations. Before building in one, we study the academic literature, design criticism, user needs and ethical risks around it.

Research does not make a product automatically good, but it helps us ask better questions, avoid careless claims, and design with more humility.

05

Craft & atmosphere

Aesthetic quality is not decoration. How something looks, moves, sounds and feels shapes whether an experience is calm and clear or noisy and overwhelming.

We design with atmosphere, restraint and emotional clarity, because well-made things make care feel tangible.

06

Trust & data

Privacy belongs in the architecture from day one: what is collected, what stays on the device, what is shared, what can be exported and what can be deleted.

Trust is not created by a policy alone. It is created by architecture, restraint and clear communication.

How a project runs

Four phases, the same hands throughout.

Most projects run from around eight weeks to several months, depending on scope. We would rather do fewer things well than many things quickly.

01

Understand

Goals, constraints, the people involved, the research that exists and the claims that do not hold up. We leave this phase with a brief we all believe.

02

Shape

Flows, interface, motion and a working prototype. Decisions are made on real screens, not slide decks, and tested with the people they are for.

03

Build

The same team carries the design into code — iOS, Android or web — with the detail intact. Accessibility, performance and privacy are built in, not bolted on.

04

Settle

Launch, measure what matters, refine. We hand over clean systems and documentation, or stay on as the product grows.

Working with us

Open for client work.

We take on client projects selectively, so each one gets the studio’s full attention. We are a good fit if you want a product designed and built under one roof, you value restraint over feature count, and you would rather ship something considered than something merely fast.

  • New mobile or web apps, from first sketch to store listing
  • Redesigns of existing products that have lost their way
  • Product and interface design for teams with their own engineers
  • Any category — the subject changes, the standard does not