Bubbles

About us

Bubbles is a revolutionary app designed to transform hygiene habits through the power of emotional motivation and social accountability. By creating a supportive community where users can track their shower routines, share progress, and cheer each other on, Bubbles turns personal hygiene into a shared, rewarding experience. Our mission is to foster positive social impact, making the world a cleaner, fresher, and more pleasant place—one shower at a time. At its core, Bubbles empowers users to take charge of their hygiene, no matter how hectic life gets. By combining emotional appeal, social accountability, and a touch of humour, Bubbles makes cleanliness a fun and communal goal. Together, we can build a healthier, more hygienic world.

What it does

Bubbles incorporates multiple innovative features to encourage users to maintain good hygiene: Timer Functionality: A built-in timer starts when the user presses the “I have showered” button, tracking the time since their last shower. Emotional Animations: As time passes without a shower, a lovable dog character transitions from a clean, happy state to a filthy, sad one. These animations evolve, appealing to users’ emotions and motivating them to act. Reminders and Notifications: After 24 hours of inactivity, users receive gentle prompts to shower. Friends are also notified with banners like, “User A hasn’t showered yet!” creating a sense of friendly social pressure. Friends Page: Users can track their friends’ shower habits, seeing how long it’s been since they last showered. This fosters accountability and encourages everyone to stay fresh and clean. By combining emotional engagement, social accountability, and practical reminders, Bubbles ensures users prioritize their hygiene, even during busy or stressful times.

How we built it

Bubbles was built using Swift with the following frameworks and features: UI Components: We used UIView, UITableView, and UICollectionView to create a seamless and intuitive user interface. Timer Logic: A Timer increments elapsedTime every second, triggering real-time UI updates. Alerts are displayed at specific intervals using showAlert and local notifications via the UserNotifications framework. State Management: @State ensures the UI dynamically reflects changes to variables like elapsedTime and currentImageIndex. Animations: Smooth transitions between images are achieved using withAnimation, cycling through an array of visuals every 5 seconds. Notifications: Local notifications remind users to shower, with permission requests handled by the requestNotificationPermission() method. Future Enhancements: We plan to store user data in a JSON file or cloud database to track activity history across sessions and improve scalability.

Challenges we ran into

Idea-to-Product Transition: Translating our vision into a functional app was challenging, as we had to prioritize core features over additional ideas. Database Limitations: Initially, we aimed to use Firebase for cloud-based data management. However, installation issues forced us to pivot to on-device storage using JSON. In the future, we hope to transition to a cloud-based solution for better scalability and user experience. UI/UX Design: Positioning icons and designing an intuitive layout required constant debugging and iteration, teaching us the importance of meticulous planning in app development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the challenges, we’re proud to have built a fully functional app that: Registers users and tracks their shower habits. Sends automated reminders and notifications to users and their friends. Features engaging animations and a user-friendly interface. Encourages users to prioritize hygiene, fostering a cleaner, fresher community. We believe Bubbles has the potential to make a real-world impact by addressing the common issue of neglected personal hygiene.

What we learned

This project was a crash course in app development and UI/UX design. In just 24 hours, we: Gained hands-on experience with Swift and iOS frameworks. Learned the importance of state management and real-time UI updates. Developed problem-solving skills to overcome technical challenges. Discovered the value of user-centred design in creating engaging and functional apps. These skills will undoubtedly benefit us in future projects and endeavours.

What's next for Bubbles

We have exciting plans to expand Bubbles into a comprehensive hygiene management platform:

Diverse Hygiene Tracking: Beyond showers, we aim to include features for tracking other hygiene practices like brushing teeth, washing hands, and more.

Heat Map Feature: A heat map will identify areas with higher levels of unpleasant odours, helping users avoid such locations.

Cloud Integration: Transitioning to a cloud-based database will enable better data management and scalability.

Community Features: Adding leaderboards, achievements, and rewards to further motivate users and strengthen the community. With these enhancements, Bubbles will continue to inspire better hygiene habits and create a cleaner, healthier world.

Built With

• swift