JWT – Japanese Walking Timer

Inspiration

As a product designer and a personal trainer, I'm always interested in fitness & activity trends. I want to know what people are getting excited about, and having an informed opinion on these trends has helped me advise my friends in family on what's legit and what's just an internet fad. I started reading about Japanese walking and pretty quickly thought, "This is legit!" My parents are in their late 60s, so I was particularly motivated by them, and the idea of building something they could use to get healthier.

What it does

JWT is an app for the Japanese Walking Technique, where a user does 10 cycles of walking quickly and slowly for 3 minutes at a time. The result is a 30-minute workout what is just as low impact as walking normally, but elevates your heart rate more. You end up burning more calories and losing more fat due to the extra effort that it takes to get up to fast walking speed.

JWT supports this experience by providing an interval timer that meets users where they're at. If the default Japanese Walking Technique is too challenging, users can customize their intervals to make the workout more manageable. We send optional daily affirmations and streak reminders to motivate users to keep walking. Successful walks get tracked as workouts in Apple Health, and users can see their progress visually in our walk history calendar. The app is fully functional for free, but pro users get access to background timers, live activities, and a standalone watch app to make the app as convenient as possible.

How we built it

This app was built in Xcode with Swift and SwiftUI. In the later stages of development, I brought in Cursor to help debug some trickier bits. I designed the clock logo, and the animations were done by the very talented @armangunawan78 on Fiverr https://www.fiverr.com/armangunawan78?source=gig_pag

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge I ran into was definitely the iPhone live activity. Turns out, Apple isn't super interested in you running a series of 3-minute timers in the background of your app. My first attempt was a fairly straightforward ask of "Hey iPhone, I'd like to give you a series of 3-minute timers, please run them in sequence". iPhone didn't like that, and wasn't super interested in switching timers from fast to slow when the screen was locked.

After several variations of that, my next attempt was to use build a server with Firebase Cloud Functions and send updates to the app via Firebase Messages, so that iPhone (and really specifically the AOD lock screen) would be forced to update. I worked on this for a week, and it worked more or less, but it wasn't consistent and wasn't super performant. The timers I'm running can be as short as 1 minute long, so if a cloud function runs ~5 seconds behind, that throws off the rhythm of the experience and creates a moment where the app feels broken. This also meant that users needed to have wifi or cell service to use the app, and that didn't feel right.

Ultimately, I opted for a redesigned live activity that displayed the intervals using a single timer, along with a push notification setup to ensure users received updates while walking. This approach gave me watch notifications without any extra effort, which was great. If I had more time, I might look back into another server-based approach, but I like where I ended up, and I can appreciate the simplicity that comes with not needing to manage (and pay for) a server.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm super proud of building something that works for free. The app store is littered with experiences that require a couple of dollars a month to function, and while JWT also offers a subscription option, I feel great about an app that's fully functional for free.

I'm also glad to be doing something that helps people. If this little dancing clock helps one person get into better shape, then all of this effort will have been totally worth it.

What we learned

This app was a learning experience in several ways. I built my first standalone Apple Watch App and my first Live Activity. Since starting this app, a couple of other Japanese Walking Apps have started to pop up on the App Store. I'm definitely biased, but my goal is to differentiate myself with quality and affordability. The affordability part is relatively straightforward, but there are so many little edge cases that come with building something with a 30-minute session time, and I'm walking away from Shipaton with a new appreciation for all of the apps that appear "simple", and all of the active design and QA work that creates experiences that users can use without thinking.

What's next for JWT – Japanese Walking Timer

Next for JWT is more joy! As this app continues to grow, I want to make sure that this app continues to be a space of fun and whimsy. Getting healthy isn't fun for most people, and I'd really love to build a companion that makes fitness a little less of the absolute worst.

I also have some A/B tests plan to really lock down the pricing model. It's important to me that this app feels complete for free, and that the pricing feels affordable enough to be a no-brainer for someone that's using this on a regular basis.

JWT already has a passionate group of users that are sending feedback and suggestions, so I'm looking forward to continuing to build something that people enjoy!

Built With

• swift
• swiftui