Here is how I teamed up with my colleagues and built an app as a side project!
“Do More of what makes you happy 😃!”
As a developer, we always eager to work in stress-less projects. But it’s not possible when we working for client who strict with time rules. We are always in a queue with tasks, issues, releases etc.
In culture of Spritle , we are more encouraged to create our own product. People who are with better idea can build their product as a side project.
This side projects are helped to us learn new things and grow together. We used this playground to test our skills in hassle-free mode.
In this story, we are ready to share about — how we build an idea into a better product through design, technical bottlenecks we faced and some marketing strategy. Yeah! It’s quite interesting. Let starts hacking.
Minoot — Battery Alert
“Connect charger: Battery is getting low. 5% remaining!”
Whenever this warning message prompt on our phone, it’ll make us angry and helpless .
We all face a moment when your partner or your pals were calling you and your battery is totally drained and the mobile is about to be dead. What if we get an app to manage this situation?
To avoid this hesitation moments, my team ended up with an idea called “Battery Alert”.
We had post-work hour stand-ups, design evaluation, marketing discussions and lot more to build this as better app.
Idea brainstorming
“Ideas come from everything!”
Well! Our idea is quite bit easy and simple. Whenever your battery reaches some emergency level, automatically our app must send alert SMS to your selected contacts.
To achieve this easy goal, application must accommodate feature like,
- Option to set battery alert level between 5 to 30%.
- Option to pick recipients from your contact list to whomever user want to send alert SMS.
- Option to customize alert message ( For Eg: “Hey Dear! Don’t panic . My battery is about to die..)
- Monitor battery level simultaneously and send alerts message automatically.
Design
“Design transcends agenda”!
In our app, all features are about a single object called “Battery”. So it’s better to have design agenda stick around it. Our designer more concerned about presenting this idea to all users with better visualization.
He started with pencil sketches and finally came up with digital design canvas that depicted our idea perfectly.
Also it’s an easy and simple idea, we decided keep it as a single page presentation. So user can set battery level, customize alert message and pick contact in a single action.
Technical bottlenecks:
Even though we are good with our android science, we faced few technical failures in this experiment.
Drawing battery object:
- We little bit confused when try to draw a battery object. Drawing battery object is easy one but enhancing it with drag feature,we found some difficulties. So we decided to implement
SeekBar(One of android’s progress bar UI element). - We transformed the horizontal seek-bar into vertical bar and customized the seek-bar thumb programmatically.
- With this vertical seek-bar user can set battery alert level by dragging on seek-bar thumb as denoted below,
Monitoring Battery level:
- Our one of the main objective is to send SMS automatically when battery reaches below our alert level. For this action, we need to monitor users battery level continuously.
- We received value of battery level through Broadcast Receiver when battery level changes in foreground. But we faced an another issue. We can’t keep track of battery level while app in background or terminated.
- Anyhow we found solution by calculating battery level from system service through Alarm manger API.
We created an Intent and wrap it inside a PendingIntent. Next we got the alarm manager to which we pass the pendingIntent and specify it to go off in particular seconds.
There is a timer that starts running when the device boots up to measure the up time of the device and this is the type that triggers your alarm according to the up time of the device.
AlarmManager.RTC_WAKEUP will trigger the alarm according to the time of the clock.
Hitting play store
Whoa! Finally we completed with our initial goals. It’s time to get placed in Play Store.
After completed development process, we concentrated on procedure like App Store Optimization(ASO), Keyword research to get better visibility in Play Store.
For example , we embedded keyword like ‘battery’, ‘alert’ in our app description and meta data. So it’ll be listed in Google Play store whenever user searching with these keywords
Also we attached better feature graphics and screenshots with app. So user can understand primary goal of the app before install and use it.
Naming our app
- Minoot is derived from the Tamil words ‘Minn’ meaning electricity and ‘Ooti’ meaning charging.
- The driving factor for this app was from our experiences of having our loved ones concerned at emergencies and we wanted to eliminate that in a smart way.
- We named the app in our tongue to represent the connect with our roots and family.
Future Enhancements
In this initial version, we just implemented monitoring battery level and sending alert message through SMS. But in upcoming releases we planned to implement feature like,
- Sending message through other messenger apps like Whatsapp,Instagram,etc.
- Suspending notification about app that consumes more battery energy.
- App per analysis of battery usage and more…
Team:
This our product idea with minimized goal. We built it in short time and experienced lot from it. Thanks to Spritlians from my team Dhina (Senior Desinger), Sriram (Business Analyst) and Prabakaran (Developer) for their support and involvement.
You can download android app from below link and can share your valuable feedback.
