Christopher Zimbizi

MindScribe: Authoring Cognitive Wellness Through a Declarative, On-Device iOS Architecture

Christopher Zimbizi '27 and Dr. Sara Jamshidi. Lake Forest College, Mathematics and Computer Science Department Lake Forest, IL 60045

Rising concerns over cognitive decline and the limitations of fragmented, cloud-dependent digital health tools highlight a need for private, user-centric applications. The difficulty lies in building a comprehensive tool that is both feature-rich and prioritizes user data privacy, empowering individuals to proactively manage lifestyle factors grounded in established wellness principles.

This project addresses the architectural and implementation challenges of creating a comprehensive, offline-first native iOS application for tracking five key pillars of brain health: Sleep, Exercise, Nutrition, Stress, and Engagement.

We developed MindScribe, an application architected using the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern with a declarative user interface built in SwiftUI. The core of the approach is a robust on-device persistence layer, ensuring all user data is stored securely and privately, making the app fully functional without network connectivity. The software was engineered with a modular, feature-based file structure to ensure long-term maintainability and scalability.

The result is a feature-complete prototype that successfully implements daily data logging across all five pillars. The application features interactive data visualization for weekly and monthly trends and includes a system for generating comprehensive, multi-page PDF health reports directly on the user's device.

This work demonstrates that a modern, declarative, on-device technology stack can be effectively leveraged to create a secure and feature-rich health management application. The architecture serves as a model for developing user-centric, privacy-first applications in the digital wellness space, proving that complex functionality does not require compromising user data ownership.