The Eleven Hack Day Pt. 1
And our first project, ‘ONE TAPP’…
10am
And we’re off! First order of the day is food and beverages; with coffee on the go and lunch lined up.
10.02
With nourishment all sorted, let’s get started. The basic premise of the app has already been laid out:
The ‘quantified self’ is becoming more and more prevalent and mainstream nowadays, with technology like wearables making tracking data about yourself much easier. The challenge, which has not been solved thus far, is now to track very specific personal goals with just one tap. This could be how many beers you have on a night out, how often you check Facebook, or how many times your co-worker uses the word ‘literally’. Pretty much anything, really.
ONE TAPP allows you to simply track pre-set habits that matter to you. With one quick tap you can track absolutely anything you want. Each day, an email is sent to you letting you know the vital data behind your habit.
How it works:
An iPhone app with just one button. Pressing this button sends a data point containing the date, time and location of the tap, as well as what you’re actually tracking. An email containing all the data behind your taps is then sent to you every morning.
With an API, beyond that, as they say, the possibilities are endless!
10.30
Ding Ding Ding! Round 1…
What’s on the menu for our intrepid team?
Development Team : Write API, write iPhone app, link main button to the app.
Design Team : Home screen, slate, logo, splash screen, email address entry.
Sounds simple enough (cough cough). 7hrs 30mins to go!
11.12
onetapp.co now directs to our app! Hooray!
11.30
Ever wondered how much data is involved in a simple app? Well, here’s the table we’ve put together:
API is progressing well; it’s almost written.
12 noon
Right, time to review where we’ve got to…
Design:
A basic mock up of all screens has been completed. This includes splash, intro page, homepage and slate.
Next up is to adjust the slate and create design dialogue for when the tracker is reset. Also on the agenda is crafting a logo and icon, coming up with colours for branding and establish a ‘one-pager’ website
One challenge is working out how to effectively transition between colours in the back end. Let’s see how we go!
Development:
On the development side, we’ve done all the setup, written the back end API and have a working database.
(API written, where user can sign up — information goes to server — now to create stuff in back end to respond appropriately and how to change what you’re tracking.)
We’ve worked out the user sign-up methodology and established how information goes to the server. Now, the primary target is to get the back end responding to information appropriately and setting up functions to change what the user tracks.
Next — get started on the iPhone side. Very simply, we’ve got to put a button on a screen and see if we can ping the server. Piece of cake, right? Also, working out how we can edit things in the settings is a priority.
12.44
And our first app is up! OK, it’s a blank screen, but now we’re working with something!
13.40
A metric tonne of lunchtime chicken has just been demolished, and it’s about time to find out how to code our main button…
14.09
Buttons now have actions on the App — well, they’re not technically buttons (and they don’t really do much), but it’s a start nevertheless!
16.28
It’s been a quiet couple of hours, with only the odd groan or blasphemous outcry punctuating the silence. It’s dawned on us that although we have a button and things might be happening, at the moment we’re not actually counting that much! It’s tense. 90 minutes to go. BRING ON AFTERNOON SNACKS!
16.48
The mere thought of sweet afternoon treats must have done it. Three clicks of our button and there we go — we have officially drunk three virtual beers! Almost there: it’s styling time…
17.45
Feels a bit like Dexter’s Lab in here at the minute, just with a couple more beers…
The website has gone live and with 8 minutes to go, it’s down to the wire with some final design tweaks. Will we make it?
1800
Pens down.
And we’re there (with some minor hiccups along the way)!
OK, so we don’t have an app on our phone yet, but we’re pretty much there. We can click a button, and it counts stuff. We have some colour on the screen; the colours aren’t quite changing when we click yet, but we’re not far off.
We need one more day for those final tweaks and you’ll be tapping away in no time.
Challenges
For a first hack day we think it went well. We fulfilled our main objective: we have an app. It didn’t come without its issues though. For future, we know:
Time was against us — we may have overestimated how much we could get done in one day. But still, put your mind to it and a lot can be done!
Many hands make lighter work — with a bigger team, we may have just made it in time (and more is always merrier).
Successes
Massive kudos to the team for pushing themselves to the limit.
We can count!
The site is now live. On our next Hack Day we plan to finish all those final alterations, add some bells and whistles, submit it to the app store, and ONE TAPP will be born!
We hope you enjoyed following our progress and don’t forget to subscribe at onetapp.co
