/ How it works
How NIX works.
NIX rewards students for being present at school events: verified phone-free, no phones confiscated. Here's the whole system, end to end.
/ The problem
Phones quietly empty the room.
Assemblies, games, and dances compete with an endless feed in every pocket. Even when students are physically in the room, attention drifts to a screen, and turnout suffers when there's no real reason to show up at all.
Staff are left to play phone police: asking students to put devices away, again and again, with little to show for it. It feels adversarial, and it rarely sticks.
The usual fix is to take phones away. But confiscation treats presence as something to enforce, not something worth choosing.
/ The NIX approach
Reward presence. Don't confiscate phones.
Phone-lockup pouches like Yondr take phones away and lock them up: presence by force. NIX flips it: students choose to leave their phones behind, and being present earns a real reward.
Phone lockup
Phones get sealed in a pouch on the way in. It works by removing the choice, and staff still own enforcement. The message is: your phone is a problem.
/ The NIX way
Rewarded presence
Students choose to be present and phone-free, NIX verifies it, and they earn an instant reward. The message is: showing up is worth it.
/ Step by step
Three roles, one simple flow.
Students earn the reward, your door team hands it out, and admins set everything up. Here's what each side does.
/ For students
Show up, earn a reward
Download the app
Students install the NIX app on iPhone or Android. One free download, no hardware, no account fees.
Register with your school
Sign up with your school and student ID. Setup takes a minute, then you're ready for any event.
Leave your phone away
Before the event, leave your phone in your car or at home. The NIX app reports the phone's location, and the event geofence confirms it's away from the venue. That's the proof you showed up without it.
Earn a reward
Then just be present. Whoever's on the door, staff or a student worker, scans your student ID badge, confirming you're there while your phone isn't, and you earn the reward. Nothing to open on a phone: the person scanning tells you what you got.
/ For staff or student workers
Scan a badge, hand out a reward
Open the event
Whoever's running the door, staff or a student worker, opens the event in the NIX app using the code the admin created. No login or seat needed to scan.
Scan the ID badge
Scan the student's physical student ID badge, the same card they already carry. No QR codes, no in-app codes to fumble with.
Hand out the reward
If the student is verified present and phone-free, the scanner shows what they earned. Hand over the coupon, or let NIX save it to their student ID.
/ For admins
Set it up, watch it run
Create events
Set up an event from the web dashboard and draw an optional per-event geofence around the venue.
Invite your team
Add sub-admins to seats to help manage events. Scanning runs off the event code, so anyone you hand it to, staff or student workers, can run the door without a seat.
Watch the analytics
Track turnout and engagement across every event from one real-time dashboard.
Manage billing
Handle your per-school subscription and seats in one place. No setup fees, and students never pay.
/ The tech
What's under the hood.
No new hardware, no QR codes, no honor system. Just the pieces that make verified, rewarded presence work on the night.
One app, iPhone and Android
One app for students and a built-in scanner mode for whoever runs the door, staff or student workers alike. No extra hardware to buy, charge, or replace.
Geofenced phone-away verification
The app reports the phone's location; if the phone is away (outside the fence), NIX counts the student as phone-free. Location is checked only around an event, from 90 minutes before to 30 minutes after. The app keeps one latest reading that overwrites itself, so there is no location history, and the location saved with a scan is deleted automatically 90 days after the scan.
Student ID badge scanning
Whoever's on the door scans the physical student ID badge students already carry. No QR codes, nothing new to issue.
Rewards the school picks
Each event carries one reward: a printed coupon, free entry to a future event, or a perk saved to the student ID.
Real-time dashboard
Turnout, engagement, and check-ins roll up into one admin dashboard.
Per-school pricing & seats
One annual subscription per school, sized by enrollment, with seat-based team management. No setup fees.
/ Why it works
Good behavioral design, not a crackdown.
The reason NIX changes turnout isn't surveillance, it's incentives. Reward the behavior you want, and you get more of it.
- Positive reinforcement, not punishment
- People repeat behavior that gets rewarded. NIX attaches a tangible upside to being present, instead of a penalty for having a phone.
- A reason to look up
- When showing up phone-free earns something real, an optional event becomes one students actually choose to attend.
- Staff stop being the phone police
- Nobody confiscates anything. Students opt in to being phone-free, verify themselves present, and staff simply hand out the reward.
Common questions
Do students have to give up their phones?+
How does NIX know a student is phone-free?+
What does it take to run the door?+
Does this work for any event?+
Can NIX replace phone pouches for the whole school day?+
/ NIX Assistant
Every admin gets an assistant. It's included.
The NIX Assistant is built into the admin console today, for every NIX school, at no added cost. Type what you need in plain English: set up Friday's game night, move it to 7 pm, pull last month's numbers. The assistant drafts, your admin confirms. Nothing is created or changed without a person's sign-off.
Staff-facing only. It works from event details and aggregate numbers, never student personal data, and conversations are not stored on our servers. See how we handle data.
The actual flow: you ask, it drafts, you confirm
/ Built for schools
More presence. Less screen time. Less work for staff.
NIX gives students a concrete reason to look up and show up, and gives your team a system that runs itself once it's set up.
- Compliance you can show a board
- Every scan is logged. Phone-free compliance in real time, ready for a board or district report. The same scan also gives the office a whole-school arrival record: who scanned in, and when, downloadable as a spreadsheet. It complements your student information system and does not replace it. It is not period-by-period attendance, and nothing is written to your SIS.
- Higher event turnout
- A real reward for showing up turns optional events into ones students actually attend.
- Genuine presence
- Phone-free verification rewards students for being in the moment. Together, not on a screen.
- Effortless to run
- Set up an event, hand the code to anyone running the door, staff or student workers, and let NIX verify and reward. No spreadsheets, no clipboards.
/ What we do not do
Verification, not surveillance.
A phone-free policy should never turn into a tracking program. This is exactly what NIX measures and what it throws away.
One yes or no
The scan answers a single question: was the phone left away from the venue. The location saved with the scan is deleted after 90 days.
Coordinates are purged
At an event, the location saved with a scan is deleted automatically 90 days after the scan. A school-day scan saves no coordinates at all. What stays is the verification result and the single latest reading, which overwrites itself, so no location history accumulates on a student.
Nothing about the screen
NIX does not read messages, apps, or anything a student does on the device. There is nothing there to read.
Bring NIX to your school.
Pilot a verified phone-free school day, with rewarded phone-free events included. No pouches, no new hardware, no setup fees.