An existing app needs a way forward.
Your small team has an app people depend on, but keeping it current has become difficult. Get an outside perspective on the experience and codebase, a practical modernization plan, and help carrying it out.
An independent software studio · iOS & Mac
Thoughtful design.
Experienced engineering.
Better apps.
Give your existing app a future. Turn a new idea into something real.
Mutant Soup Software specializes in apps for Apple’s platforms, helping small teams assess, redesign, modernize, and maintain their apps — and helping founders turn an idea or an AI-built prototype into a working product.
Hands-on senior help · 30 years of software engineering experience
A fresh perspective
Wherever your app is today,
there’s a next step.
An idea needs experienced hands.
You have a concept or an AI-built starting point, but need help deciding what to build and how. Define the experience, test feasibility, and build a prototype for an investor conversation — or an app ready for release.
Services
Three ways to move forward.
Start with a focused assessment, a scoped design and development project, or ongoing help. The engagement follows the app’s needs.
Assess and plan
Understand what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what comes next.
App assessment & roadmap
Review the running app’s design and workflows. With code access, assess its architecture and technical foundations too. For a new app, clarify the concept, feasibility, and scope.
Receive evidence-based findings, priorities, dependencies, an implementation sequence, and effort ranges with explicit assumptions.
A fixed-fee engagement, typically one to two weeks, ending with a written report and a walkthrough call.
The plan stands on its own. Take it to your team or another developer; there’s no obligation to hire us to implement it.
Design and build
Make the experience clearer and the engineering ready for what’s next.
UI & UX design
Improve navigation, workflows, interaction, and visual design with modern Apple conventions and attention to accessibility.
Modernization & refactoring
Adopt SwiftUI incrementally, replace deprecated APIs, improve architecture and concurrency, and address stability, performance, and maintainability.
New apps & features
Move from concept and interaction design through implementation and release. Scope a prototype to demonstrate an idea, or develop a product for real-world use.
On-device AI
Assess suitability, prototype real use cases, and evaluate results. Consider privacy, device support, responsiveness, battery, and thermal constraints; local or offline execution depends on the feature and device.
Maintain and evolve
Keep your app healthy — and make the next update easier.
Maintenance & support
Platform compatibility work, dependency updates, bug fixes, release assistance, and agreed improvements. Ongoing maintenance contracts and retainers are scoped after assessing the app.
AI-assisted development for your team
Practical strategies for working with AI development tools: giving them the right project context, reviewing and testing what they produce, and keeping the architecture coherent as the codebase grows. Delivered through workshops, pairing sessions, or alongside a project.
A foundation for continued iteration
Modernization includes appropriate automated checks, documentation, build and release procedures, and a team walkthrough or handoff.
Maintain the app independently, keep us on, or work together. You should understand what you’re receiving and how to keep improving it.
Selected work
Ideas put into practice.
Examples of our own work, from a consumer app to open-source tools.
Production app
Hamster Soup Forever
A companion app for fans of the reality TV show Big Brother, on iOS and Android, bringing community coverage and cast information into one experience, with optional on-device summaries on supported devices.
A longstanding product with practical questions at its heart: how to organize information, make daily use straightforward, and introduce useful AI with care for privacy.
Explore Hamster SoupOpen source
Tools & ideas, shared.
Open-source work offers a closer look at technical decisions and the care that goes into making software useful to other developers.
Aurora Toolkit
A modular Swift toolkit for AI workflows, on-device machine learning, and large language model integrations.
Flow Architecture
A Swift pattern for modeling multi-step user journeys, like onboarding, as testable state machines with linear and branching paths.
Heavy Workloads
A Swift concurrency pattern for pacing resource-intensive tasks around device temperature, power state, and queued work — ideal for integrating on-device AI responsibly, without overheating the device or draining the battery.
Hi, I’m Dan
Murrell Jr.
Engineer, designer, and founder of Mutant Soup Software.
I bring 30 years of software engineering experience, native Apple development, UI and UX design, architecture, and technical leadership to my work. I’ve built and led teams creating products that prioritize simplicity and effectiveness, with a commitment to intuitive, inclusive, and accessible design.
My liberal arts education is the foundation for how I work: clear communication, diverse perspectives, and a thoughtful understanding of technology’s place in everyday life.
Experience
- 2024–nowEngineering Manager · Empyrean Benefit Solutions
Leading the engineering team behind an HR benefits communication platform spanning apps, web apps, and services.
- 2018–2023Engineering Manager · BigCommerce
Built and led the mobile organization, creating mobile products, development tools, and supporting services from the ground up.
- 2012–2018iOS Architect · Mutual Mobile
Agency work for clients including Nike, Disney, Under Armour, eero, Comcast, and Honeywell.
- 2011–2012Web & Mobile Developer · Mississippi State University
- 1998–2010Senior Software Engineer · Webmaster, Inc.
Web front ends and apps for the ConferenceRoom and DriveShare products.
- 1994–1998Indie developer & consultant · Self-employed
Published Amiga shareware and built Java applets for clients.
Education
- 2007–2010B.A., Communication & B.A., General Liberal Arts · Mississippi State University
History and Sociology concentration, earned while working full-time as a software engineer.
Experienced judgment. Modern tools.
We use AI development tools to accelerate exploration and implementation, backed by hands-on review, testing, and responsibility for the result. Clear requirements, coherent design, and architectural judgment guide the work. We also help teams adopt these tools with the same discipline.
For client projects, we agree on tool use and handling of confidential material before using it with AI services.
How we work
Clear steps. Shared understanding.
Talk about the app
Start with an introductory conversation about the idea, current challenges, and desired outcome.
Agree on the scope
A paid assessment where needed, or a direct scoped proposal. Recommendations have value independently of implementation.
Work in milestones
Review progress and decisions along the way, with clear expectations about what each milestone delivers.
Hand off & keep moving
Receive documented work and a walkthrough, with optional ongoing maintenance and improvements.
Let’s talk
Tell us about your app — what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and where you want to take it.
A short assessment, a new prototype, a modernization project, or ongoing support: start with a conversation.
Based in Austin, Texas, working with teams anywhere. In-person workshops and sessions available around Austin.
Include a brief description or public app link, the improvements you have in mind, and your timing. There’s no need to send source code or sensitive material in the first email.