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UI/UX Design Mobile app 2021 — present Figma

FireAlarm

Long-term product design on an app that sends people real-time alerts about fire brigade call-outs and traffic accidents near them, sourced directly from official rescue-service data.

2021 — present · firealarm.cz · App Store · Google Play

Written 10 August 2026.

The problem

FireAlarm sends people alerts about fire brigade call-outs and traffic accidents in areas they choose — usually around where they live. Events are sorted by category and pulled directly from official sources maintained by the rescue services, so there's none of the noise or misinformation that comes with social media.

When I joined the project in 2021, it was a web app with no mobile version. Users picked the regions and districts they cared about, and the app emailed them about events — no real user accounts, just an email address collecting messages. A similar model to how Bazoš works on the Czech market.

My role

I joined at a point where FireAlarm already had a handful of users, but there was practically no way to tell who was actually using it — without real accounts, that wasn't possible. I started with small UI consultations for the developers, gradually taking on smaller changes to the web app myself. The mobile app was designed by someone else at the time.

In the meantime, a web shop for original merchandise came together, which I designed in full — though during development it drifted from the original, considerably cleaner design.

In 2024 I took over as the lead — and only — UI/UX designer and designed a complete redesign of the app, including a new way it worked: proper user accounts and a small "social network" for firefighters and enthusiasts to share photos from call-outs. I'm still in that role today, with the majority of the decision-making power over the app's design. Alongside design, I also handle marketing materials and occasionally pitch promo ideas.

The old web app's sign-up screen — just an email, no user account
The web app's navigation menu
The events overview, filterable by district
A single event's detail view

Process

Most of the work is small, incremental changes — adding and tuning features based on feedback from users on social media and store reviews. One major exception was a complete redesign shipped for Christmas 2024, which I prepared together with the development team over roughly 3–4 months.

Key decisions

The redesigned events feed, grouped by day
Event detail, now with location data and a map
The social feed — photos from call-outs shared by users
Settings — region picker and notification preferences

The result

The app has over 30,000 users today (per internal numbers). On the App Store it has 141 reviews averaging 4.7 out of 5 since launching in August 2021; on Google Play, 357 reviews averaging 4.2 — and it's the only internal product at the agency I'd call successful without hesitation.

I want to be honest here too, same as with ChallengeMe. The app's design is starting to show its age. Android still carries a look designed primarily for iOS, and the iOS interface itself no longer keeps pace with modern SwiftUI. React Native made sense when development started — today, partly thanks to AI tooling, it would make more sense to split the app into two native codebases, Swift and Kotlin.

I have plenty of material and findings ready for usability improvements and new features (a marketplace, fire-risk tracking, and more), but the agency that maintains the app isn't investing as much time into further development as it would take — attention and resources go to projects that, unlike FireAlarm, don't actually have the same outlook. The app is solidly usable today, but with the space it deserves it could be noticeably cleaner and more modern than it is now.

Proof that a well-scoped, genuinely useful product can grow almost on its own — and a reminder that even the best-performing project still needs a team willing to keep investing in it, not just maintain it.