Return

Inspiration

I remember those rainy days when I user a child, going with the car and watching the water drops flow over the windows and merging together. And as a grown up, asking myself, would it be possible to create something similar in iOS?

A couple of months later, my wife was reading a book named "Let them". She did read from the book that the author, when procrastinating or struggle to start on something had a method, like a ritual to count to three and then just do it.

So I thought, what if you give that ritual a visual representation, like, water bubble that merge. This is how it all started.

What it does

Everyone is bound to loose focus, just in varying degrees. So the aim is to return your focus, this is what the app helps you with. Within all those times you return to whatever you focusing on, there is a pattern, something that might teach you something about yourself.

How we built it

Late evenings, when both my children were sleeping, this is when the app was built. The cycle was, build, go to bed and think about design and implementation, and then do the same the day after.

Challenges we ran into

The app uses AI as a coach, which was not the idea from the start. The challenge was to make this shift from presenting data and instead make the AI present the data in language instead. With that comes the whole breakdown of AI costs, where it actually will give value and balance these two, in order to create something that works.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What I am most proud of is just the process of building something, waking up the next day and be true to yourself about what needs to change, what in the previous days work did not turn out so good. Sounds trivial but when having two small kids, and always building in a lack of sleep. Convince yourself that what you build is not good enough and it has to be rebuilt is not always the easiest.

What we learned

Even if you minimize the scope of what should be built, it tends to grow and one should not underestimate how much times it takes.

What's next for Return

The idea was and is still that the app should act like a real coach, so with user feedback, I hope to improve it further so it can build that relationship with the user.

Built With

• ios
• swift
• swiftui