Description
For our second project in Advanced Mobile App Development, I want to create a habit-tracking app called “Flame” that is centered around the idea of keeping up your “streaks” (number of consecutive days you have successfully completed each habit).
The primary inspiration for this app comes from my own struggle with building consistent habits this semester, and the COVID-19 pandemic which has thrown America and the rest of the world into a state of chaos over the past few months. With the onslaught of the pandemic, many areas are under “stay-at-home” orders. I’ve seen that under this new way of life, my friends (and me!) are having a hard time keeping some sense of normalcy and routine in our lives. I believe it is more important than ever to keep healthy habits going, and an opportune time to focus energy and attention on building those habits!
I want my app to be a very simple way to keep track of your habits, keeping things as streamlined as possible. From the development side, my goals are to become more comfortable with creating customized UI elements (this was something that I ran out of time for during the last project, so I want to prioritize it this time around) and working with Firebase/Firebase Authentication.
Audience
The audience for this app will be anyone who wants to keep track of their healthy habits, across all age groups and demographics! I hope that this app will provide a simple way for people to stay motivated and excited about building healthy habits that can improve their lives. Users will be able to store their data easily (using Firebase behind the scenes) and can also categorize their habits if desired. For instance, some users might want to categorize by time of day (morning/evening), area of life (health/productivity), etc.
Research
I did a little bit of research to see whether similar habit-tracking apps exist out there, and boy do they! A few screenshots I found on the Google Play Store can be viewed below. However, all of these apps are very feature-rich and some can be pretty complicated. When it comes to my personal style, the idea of keeping up “streaks” and positive momentum is very motivating to me. I want to create an app solely around this concept and focus on the user interface and experience, providing a seamless, user-friendly application that does one thing, but does it very well.
I think this app will be achievable to create in the time we have given, if a bit challenging perhaps. While I am pretty comfortable with using Firebase (once I learn how to set it up on Android), many other concepts I’ll need for this app are relatively new to me, like Recycler Views and customized UI elements. Hopefully I will be able to jump right in to these new concepts and the process will be smooth!
Content
The content for this app will be largely user-generated, since users will come up with their own habit goals. However, the data will be managed with Firebase, so that users can log in with Google/Facebook/Email (I plan on implementing Firebase Authentication) to access their data and not have to worry about losing anything.
Paper Prototype
Below, you can see some pictures of my paper prototype, as well as a bonus picture of my brainstorming journal for when I was coming up with ideas!
The first “sign-in” screen will only come up the first time the user logs into the app (if my understanding of Firebase Auth is correct! 🙂 ). Once logged in, users can add new habits, click on current ones to manage or edit them, or visit their profile in case they want to log out for some reason.
nate bennett 