Inspiration
My inspiration for making this app was quite simple, I had a problem. Me, along with a lot of my friends in high school struggle with focusing. We have so much things to do, homework, tests, APs, and yet we keep on procrastinating. And I tried multiple things to fix this problem. The first one was to go to a cafe or a library. To go to a space that you associate with studying. The second one was to use a study focus app that restricts other apps on your phone. The problem with the first solution was that it's not everyday that I can take the time to go to a cafe or a library. The problem with the second one was that I had my laptop and could get lazy if I wanted to. But there is something that I realized here. Even with any of these solutions, I still could slack off if I wanted to. It was rather the problem of getting myself motivated than to cuff myself and force myself to study. So I made this app. The app offers a customized virtual space - "your place" that you can focus, giving you the comfort and motivation at the tip of your fingertips.
What it does
The app is a productivity app with mainly three features. First, I wanted to make the app task oriented. Users can add subjects and files, and add tasks within them, easily organizing your assignments by due dates and how much progress you've had so far. The app automatically calculates the priorities for you, making sure you can see what you should do that day in a glance. And once you chose a task to focus on, there you can enter your common place. A virtual space that you can customize from wallpapers to drinks and food, by the coins you get from your study sessions. We also offer a app restriction, up to three apps for the free version, and unlimited for pro. We also offer three tasks per subject for the free version and unlimited for pro. In simple words, I wanted to create a study app for students by a student, that is not focused only on limiting the user, but to rather help them and offer them a space where they can feel motivated to study themselves.
How we built it
I built the app natively in Xcode using Swift and SwiftUI, using Xcode’s AI coding tools to help develop, troubleshoot, and refine its features. I designed the app’s visual identity and interface assets in Canva, then integrated them into Xcode to create a cohesive, cozy study environment. RevenueCat was implemented to manage subscriptions and premium content.
Challenges we ran into
The animation after the user would start the focus timer was the most challenging. I wanted to make a avatar walk smoothly, as well as make the screen turn horizontally automatically when entering common place and neither of those worked on the first or the tenth try. I didn't have any engineering experiences prior, so I had to find out what and how I could make Xcode program in the way I wanted it to. I used other AI tools and even designed myself using canva for days to get the result that I wanted.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
I'm proud of the atmosphere we made for the common place. We have a variety of cafes and foods and drinks that the users can customize, and as hard as it was to make, I wanted to make sure this app could provide a space for everyone and that meant variety. I'm also proud of our app restriction system which was very hard to set up, including making sure the restriction works even after closing the app as long as the timer is running.
What we learned
I think the biggest thing I learned from this experience is that there are no shortcuts. For the development of this app I used AI mainly, because I don't have any programming skills myself. But even then, it took me more than a month to get to a result that I was satisfied with. There was a time that I wanted to give up when every single prompt or twerk I wanted to make wasn't executed in the right way, and every step would make things worse. But I researched on tips and prompts, watched videos of people who has done this before, but most importantly kept on doing it. And I think the effort of that is what I gained mostly from this experience.
What's next for Common Place
I want to make much more variety of customs for people to choose from, including the avatars. But the biggest thing that I want to do is to connect this app to the users calendar so that when the user adds a task on the app, with the due date, it automatically goes down on the calendar's due date.
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