University dating app, modernised.
This application was created as a group deliverable for my 'Application Development on the iOS Environment' class. We were given the freedom of designing and constructing any app of our choice. As a group, we decided to create a student dating app.
The HUNI app was inspired by the fusion of two apps - Tinder & Clubhouse. Tinder is an infamous dating app used by the broader society, mainly the younger generation for online dating. Clubhouse, on the other hand, is an innovative social audio app where people around the world come together to talk, listen and learn from each other in real-time. By combining both ideas, we came up with a chatroom-based app inspired by the tv show taken out, where users may join as a contestant if they are interested in the host, or as an audience member.
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The HUNI app has many limited features as this project was mainly focused on the coding and construction of the app in a very constricted amount of time. We constricted the features to a few screens and used AdobeXD as the main brainstorming and prototyping platform. This allowed us to visually analyse the app and use it as a mock-up reference for the coding done on XCode.
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The Prototype
Myself and another team member were responsible for the design of the app since we both had experience using AdobeXD. We made quick sketches of possible screens we could have. Starting with a paper prototype made it efficient for us to jot down our ideas so that we can bring it to life further though digital prototyping.
Once we got a good idea on layouts and all was agreed upon with the rest of the team, we moved onto adobeXD to start drafting some of our screens. Down below were my ideas on how we could implement the multistep setup, since we discussed as a group that we all favoured this flow.
After trying to implement this setup into Xcode, it did get complicated and suggestions were brought up to minimise the amount of screens/steps needed for account setup. Here is the revised flow to compensate for users that have already created an account:
One of our biggest challenges, in terms of design, was the main feature on the home screen. We wanted to incorporate the infamous tinder swipe feature into the application. Because this was all our first time coding with swift, we were unsure if this was capable. After some immense research, we were able to successfully design the code for the main swipe feature.
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My Learning & Experience
My takeaway from this team task was definitely the improvement of working under pressure. We had roughly a two-week deadline to complete a fully working application alongside our other studies. We fell into dead ends but together as a team we worked to bring ourselves back up in order to keep moving forward. Teamwork and communication were one of our top priorities, as this task was collaborated through GitHub. We had to ensure all our merges were updated in our group chat so everyone was on the same page. A fault in communication can end up in us spending more time fixing unexpected issues.
Alongside teamwork skills, I've gathered an improved competence in coding in a new language and practical skills in utilising GitHub for collaborative purposes. GitHub was always a confusing process and concept in my head and to say that I was able to effectively commit, push, fetch and pull my changes makes me proud I've learnt so much during this project.
Thank you for reading! If you have any inquires about this project or want to work with me, feel free to pop through a message and I would be more than happy to discuss it with you ✨
