Case Study: App for guided meditation and fast learning
Many of us know the feeling when you can not focus on certain activity, something always distracts you. Do you remember the time when you opened a book and staring at it, you realized that you thought about other things at all and you had to reread the lost part of it? If all this happens to you — Bliss Machine hastens to help you.
With this useful application you will not even notice the annoying buzzing of flies. How? Everything will be simple!
The main idea of this app is the ability to more easily and more effectively study the material with the help of binaural beats. These beats are produced in the brain, rather than in the ears, so you should listen to them on headphones.
In addition to brain waves audio, you can choose a voice track for guided meditation, a relaxing music track, and possibly, another track for effects audio, like ocean waves.
How will it help you? Your brain will listen to binaural beats and at the same time receive new information, that you perceive more effectively. This is due to the synchronization of the brain hemispheres. And this, in turn, promotes more holistic brainwork. Instead of thinking mostly the left (analytical) or the right (creative) hemisphere, you use both hemispheres in a balanced manner.
We have found this app would be valuable for people, so our team immediately set about its development.
Client Requirements
The app must:
- help users to focus on certain activity.
- provide a user-friendly interface.
- have the ability to adjust brain waves frequency.
- provide the ability to create audio lessons.
- have the ability to add background music to a voice track.
- have the ability to add special effects to audio.
Development
Bliss Machine contains a large number of cases and logic, that processes these cases. If we used a standard approach and native development languages, we would have to face such challenges:
- Logic would have to be implemented for each platform separately. The result — different bugs on different platforms.
- Each platform would have to be tested separately and each bug would have to be fixed separately.
The main disadvantage is a waste of time. In view of these challenges, we chose Xamarin as the primary development environment.
What was the result? Xamarin solved the problem of writing code twice and it facilitated the process of testing. As for debugging, it is worth mentioning that it took place on real devices, rather than an emulator.
Bliss Machine has rich functionality and a lot of cases: it contains many tracks of different lengths, a lot of different options for the use of these tracks. All this needed to be simplified. Therefore, we arrived at a common view — to arrange all functions on one screen for the convenience of users.
Design
Despite the rich app functionality, it should be easy to use. This is the first step to the real success. And that is why we have sought to achieve exactly this goal.
How was the design created? In order to better understand and define the best version of the design, we started with making wireframes. After the wireframes were approved, we began creating the design. Firstly, we created the flower of life, as the key element of the design. It was created as a symbol of an endless thirst for concentration and self-knowledge.
Then we used InVision to quickly test different versions of wireframes and after several iterations and rework, we had a few design versions. And when we at last determined the final version of the design, it was uploaded in Zeplin. Thus, developers had access to the design and could start to work with it.
It should be noted that the design creation and app development were parallel. Initially, we discussed the concept and then began to work: designers worked on the app interface, programmers worked on the technical part, which could be done without design. As the result, after we have combined our achievements, we got the Bliss Machine.
Testing
Since the app contains a lot of cases, it was not so easy to test it. For example, we need to test the behavior of the player when it plays long program (30–60 min). Accordingly, we should launch the app and not only test it, but also relax (in case of meditation) or learn (as to educational program).
In most cases, when users start the process of meditation, the app will be in the background. So we needed to test how an application would behave in this case, including safe energy mode on a device.
The challenges we faced:
- The main difficulty was to test a lot of app cases, different cases of the operating system, and, of course, it included two platforms, different devices, different OS versions.
- Сontinuous regression test. App functionality is a rather complicated, and the cases are closely related. When we found one problem, it meant that this problem was connected with other cases. Thus, after a problem was detected and fixed, QA team had to test again all these cases.
Initially, we wanted to get as close to users as possible and test at the user level. We tested not only background tracks, but also meditation tracks, audio courses. It was not a simple functional testing. We imitated situations: meditate not only in an empty room, but also we went out to listen to the course or lecture. Therefore, our QA team only for quality products!
Results
What can you reach with this app? Bliss Machine has the user-friendly interface, so you can easily adjust an appropriate brainwaves frequency and start your meditation. To have a better effect, you can add background music and special effects to audio tracks. As the result, you will have total concentration on your personal growth.
Bliss Machine is not just another player in the store, this is a great example of an application that provides you the opportunity to achieve good results with minimal costs and maximum effect. Just imagine, how in a few clicks you become a step closer to a better version of yourself.
