I started with looking into the topic of how people can establish a better morning routine.
Topic decision
I am interested in this topic because lately I have been working on personal growth, and I think this is an important part of it. I have also been experiencing some trouble during the lockdown with getting out of bed and following a routine. I realised that this influence my state of mind for the rest of the day and affected my sleep. Before the lockdown, I was already trying to establish a morning routine by getting up early and doing some form of exercise, even when I did not have to be anywhere. I noticed that this benefitted me but did not always find the motivation to keep it going.
I recently have been following social media influencers who have done challenges to get up together at a certain time and do some kind of morning activity with their followers, such as Gwen van Poorten who has done a meditation challenge.My sister has inspired me to choose this subject, as she has a mindset business, and did a similar challenge as to Gwen van Poorten. She inspired me to work out this idea and to do more research into it.
Since corona, it has been harder for more people to have a morning routine since they don’t have to be anywhere. But outside of this time, I believe it is important to take some time for yourself before your obligations start in the morning and do things that benefit your day and your development. Since the pandemic, people have become more aware of the importance of mental health and taking care of themselves. The world has slowed down and the advantages of this are seen. I think researching this concept of how people could improve their morning routine would gain a lot of interest at this time as well as when things go back to normal.
Preliminary research?
I have dived into multiple technologies that caught my attention for this topic.
Google Assistant
Google Assistant can get multiple things done automatically with Routines. It is possible to schedule a Routine for when you need it or start it any time with a command. F.e.: Take your phone on/off silent, play a podcast, adjust lights, set your alarm, play sleep sounds,
Benefits:
You don’t need to look at your voice (voice command). You won’t be distracted by your notifications or other things on your phone.
The assistant can brighten the light, which makes it easier for you to get out of bed.
Set your alarm in the evening, so you don’t have to use your phone right before you go to sleep.
What do you need?
Smart lights, integration with Google (f.e. podcasts) *look into this, how is it possible that google can play a podcast for you?
Disadvantages
You have to talk all the time to your home assistant. It will not tell you what things there are on your morning routine list. There is also no room for improvement (increasing meditation time) or measuring (dashboard).
Emotiv
Assess stress, focus, and more. Monitor, analyze, visualize and understand brain data in easy-to-use software. Gives insights in your brain activity. Your brain activity can stimulate things as well, such as moving a car.
Benefits
Assesses wellbeing, instant insight in mood/focus/stress. Improves focus by staying in the zone for thinking to make f.e. a car move.
Disadvantages
Expensive, cheapest is 299$.
Apps
There are already some apps for establishing a morning routine. However, I found them quite limited and had ideas on how to elaborate on these apps. I would like to give suggestions for morning activities instead of having to type it in yourself which is required in the app My Morning Routine. I would like to add a component as well where you are able to automatically increase your time daily if you for example want to improve meditation.
Further research interests
I would like to do further research into how following a morning routine benefits people. I want to operationalize the concept and measure the benefits of having a good and frequent morning routine. I want to measure the outcome of all the elements that are added to the routine as well. For example, how does working out in the morning improve the state of being of a person for the rest of the day? If people get a better insight into their morning routine benefits, they will become more motivated to stick to it.
Technology
I want to take a deeper look into creating an app. I choose an app because it is accessible, everyone owns a phone. It has also a lot of different possibilities, such as connecting people to each other, setting an alarm, measuring sleep, and setting up habits that people want to do.
As described before, similar apps and ideas already exist, but none of them put all the ideas together. I want to make a prototype of an app that improves the other apps and adds new concept to them. I did already learn how to use Figma during the course of Smart Interfaces. I will do more research into the technology of how to make an app, and start experimenting with this technology.
Platforms
Phase 1: low code easy platforms
As I have little coding knowledge, I started with looking at low code platforms.
PowerApps from Microsoft
I have experimented with designing an app in PowerApps. I have created some basic frames, with name input and information about different elements for a morning routine. I believe the platform has many possibilities to connect apps to data, however I found the possibilities of designing and prototyping quite limited. I also did not find the application very user friendly, after working with Figma and Adobe I did not think everything in PowerApps was designed for easy use, such as adding pictures, going to the next frame by just clicking on the entire frame, copying frames, I think there are better apps so I will look further for more user friendly technologies that have more possibilities for a nice design.
The app can be found here.
GoodBarber
I can test GoodBarber for free for 30 days. I can instantly add a logo and make a start screen.
I can also test it straightaway on my phone.
However, as it is a no-code platform, it is very limited to the possibilities. You can add a number as sections such as the following:
There unfortunately is little room for your own creativity. I can add a group chat and connect people, however I cannot have people setting up their morning routine.
Bravo
I found on youtube that you can connect Figma with bravo. As I already have a positive experience with Figma, and there is more space for adding your own elements, I have tried out if I could connect a Figma prototype with Bravo. I found how you can add data to your design out of a JSON file, so I would need to find out how to store user data into a JSON file and process that into my app.
Other technologies
I have checked out a lot of other app building platforms but found them all not suitable for my idea. Pega Platform streamlines your operations so you can reduce costs and improve business agility, and it looks for example like they enable people to develop an app for invoices. Many platforms were very expensive as well, or you had to fill in your bank details already for the free trial, even if I don’t know whether the app would be suitable or not, so I find it difficult to find a fitting solution. For Google Play Console I have to pay beforehand, but I want to try it out first. I have looked at XCode, but it needs 11.6 GB of space + some more free space on your disk which I do not have at the moment but I’m going to see if I can create it.
MIT App Inventor
I can connect the app straightaway to my phone through an MIT app which is nice. So far I think the app has nice possibilities for games and ideas, but the design possibilities are basic.
For example, if I am choosing a color for the button, the button does not automatically change color.
There are only 4 text fonts:
You have to fill in information to change sizes instead of being able to select the element and change the size.
There is a possibility to save and retrieve data to and from Excel, so the app could be made data driven.
Flutter
I have finally downloaded Xcode, and will now start with Flutter exploration. With flutter, you can build apps for iOS as well as Android, and even web apps. Companies such as Google, LinkedIn and Alibaba are using Flutter, as well as individuals who want to work out their ideas in an app. Flutter therefore enables users to give their own input and creativity. It allows you to create a native mobile application with only one codebase. There are many tutorials of Flutter on Youtube. The programming language that is being used is Dart.
With Flutter, I am able to use Material Design. This offers icons, designs and components that I can use in the app to make it look nice. I do not have to download anything for this. There are many design tips as well on the website, for example on how to design a button bar and what the do’s and don’ts are. As I am not a designer, I find this very helpful and can also get some inspiration out of the examples instead of having to look up everything myself.
They also explain how to implement each component with code through Flutter:
Here are the two screens next to each other, with the first lines of code running.
Phase 2: Web apps
As I came to the conclusion that no-code platforms are quite limited for my idea and the design, I realised that I would need to do some coding. I started looking into web app development, where some coding was required.
React
React has a lot of tutorials where you can make a to do app. However, the small elements seem to take quite a lot of time and coding knowledge which I do not have. I will keep this in mind but keep looking for other apps.
Android Studio
I have tried the Android Studio, but it is very slow and the design part seems not user friendly. (adding pictures is a lot of work and other things take too many handlings). You also have to download a lot of packages for each function to work, even though I don’t know what I’m actually downloading and why. I also tried to display the app on a virtual phone screen but it did not work and I had to install a lot of stuff for it. In the tutorials everything seems quite easy but a lot of the things do not work properly.
SWIFT
For this I need to download XCode, which takes a lot of space on my laptop so I will work on moving some files. But for now I will watch some tutorials to dive deeper into the possibilities that SWIFT offers. Changing the UI seems like a lot of work, as it has to be done with code rather than moving things with your mouse. There are a lot of symbols that apple provides for your app, so you don’t have to download things and pay/credit the author. It seems like a difficult technology but one that has a lot of possibilities so I would like to dive deeper into this. There are a lot of tutorials online and a platform for questions and lessons.
Onsen UI:
Onsen UI is designed to create hybrid and mobile apps. A hybrid app is a combination between a mobile app and a web app. You can still download it from the play store. The same basis can be used for creating iOS apps as well as Android apps. Onsen UI uses native web languages, such as HTML, CSS and Javascript. It’s free and has ready to use components.
I am following a tutorial, but I don’t know HTML or Javascript so I’m not sure what I’m doing. I can add some HTML buttons, and have copied a login screen from a tutorial that is responsive:
HTML
I am also learning HTML, because I found the language similar to most app creating technologies:
Javascript and CSS are up next.
With a tutorial, I created a meditation timer:
phase 3: trying to understand it further
in the end show what is suitable for wat.
Conclusion