Comet: Mobile Detailing
A two-sided app for a mobile car-detailing business. Customers see the price up front, book in about a minute, and watch the detailer approach on a live map. The card isn't charged until the car is done. The detailer runs the whole day from a phone: today's jobs, one swipe at a time.
A browser demo on a shared account with sample data, here to show how the app works. The finished product is a native iPhone app.
The problem.
Mobile detailing is a real, growing service business run on text messages and a Notes app, or on bloated field-service platforms built for enterprises. Customers play phone tag about when someone's showing up and pay on trust. The detailer, usually not technical, doesn't want a dashboard with forty features: they want today's jobs, directions, a way to mark progress, and to get paid.
What we built.
The thin layer between those two people. Customers pick a service, see the price before committing, and book. The card is held, not charged. A live map shows the detailer approaching street by street, with a real ETA. On the other side, the detailer advances each job with a swipe - on the way, arrived, working, done - and marking it done is what captures the payment. Tips ride the same card, no second checkout.
Decisions along the way.
One page for the customer.
The customer app is a single screen: the services with prices, plus a live card when something's happening, and the account behind one icon. Comet removes the history tab, the dates, the back buttons that led nowhere. The test for every element was whether it earned its place.
Held at booking, charged when it's done.
The card is authorized the moment you book and captured only when the job is marked complete: nothing is charged up front. It protects the detailer without asking the customer to pay for work that hasn't happened yet. It's also why payments run through a real card processor instead of Apple's in-app system: a detail is a real-world service, so the money lands in the business's bank account minus card fees, not an app-store cut.
The map answers the only question that matters.
Customers don't want a chat thread, they want to know when someone is pulling up. So tracking is a live map, a real ETA, and a five-step timeline, nothing else. The dot moves off the detailer's actual phone, so "3 min away" means three minutes.
Swipe to advance, sized for wet thumbs.
The detailer moves a job forward with a slide, not a tap. Deliberately done, so it can't fire by accident with a wet thumb in a truck. Every swipe updates the customer's timeline the instant it happens, which is what removes the "where are you?" text.
On the App Store.
The store listing - screens, captions, and copy - designed and shipped alongside the app.
