sofia c. cervantes







The Secrets of our Notes App


I asked people to show me the most honest corners of their phone:

  • Posted an anonymous survey on social media (IG, Reddit, Snapchat) asking them to anonymously submit screenshots of their notes app
  • Shared the survey with anyone and everyone
  • Collected dozens of examples and gathered some through Tik Tok
  • Looked for patterns in how people actually use the Notes App
  • Organized the notes into recurring behavioral types

and it all started to write itself…

The Notes App is the modern day diary and napkin note.

In a hyper-edited, overshared, work-obsessed digital world where pen to paper has become the outlier, the Notes app has quietly become one of the only places where people allow their thoughts to exist completely unfiltered.




My Strategic POV

Maybe you relate to the Control Tower, or you’ve been the 3am Feels with a little bit of Loose Cannon, but after sorting through tons of note entries, one thing became clear: We’re all doing the same thing with this app. Notes isn’t just a place where people store information for later. More often, it’s a mental release valve and a space where we offload pieces of our mind, whether it’s something important, useless, random, chaotic, or just a thought that didn’t have anywhere else to go.

As I was reading through these notes, I started imagining the people behind them and making up scenarios about how each one came to be. That’s where these personas came from. We’re also living in a time where being busy feels constant and expected, where everyday life can sometimes feel like a nonstop stream of information, to-do’s, opinions, nonsense, and emotions. This builds up and sometimes we just need a place to offload and exist outside of our heads for a second, the way we used to in diaries or on random napkins.

That’s what connects all of these personas. Even though they look different on the surface, they’re all ways of using the same tool to move through everyday thoughts. Some are organized, some are tumultuous, and some don’t make sense at all, but aren’t we all like that sometimes. It’s just part of how people think.

In a digital world where most things are edited and shared, this stands out. The Notes app is one of the few places where thoughts don’t have to be cleaned up or explained because it’s for you and only you. And that matters because it shows us something simple: we all need a place to put our thoughts, no matter how big or small.