Sunflower

Sunflower is a gamified app that helps you to get your daily sunlight exposure which is essential for healthy body.

Comment

Sunflower: My Journey to Gamify Daily Sun Exposure

The Spark

It all started with my favorite podcast, Huberman Lab. I was listening to an episode about sunlight, and it blew my mind. Did you know how much daylight can mess with our bodies? Morning sun, daily exposure - it's all way more important than I ever realized.

Being the tech nerd I am, my first thought was, "I gotta track this!" Lucky for me, my trusty Apple Watch was already on it. But here's where it gets interesting - Revenue Cat announced their shipathon, and bam! I knew what I had to do. I hit pause on my main project (sorry, Livity!) and dove headfirst into this wild one-month ride.

I thought, "What if I could make getting sun as fun as playing a game?" And just like that, Sunflower was born.

What's Sunflower All About?

It's pretty straightforward:

  1. It keeps tabs on your sunlight time.
  2. You set a daily sun goal (no pressure, though!).
  3. Hit your goal, and watch a cute little sunflower grow.
  4. Once it's all grown up, you can pick it and add it to your virtual garden.
  5. Oh, and it tracks your streak too - for those of you who love a good challenge!

The "How" Behind the Magic

Now, I'm an iOS dev by day, and I already have experience building the Livity app (that's my SwiftUI + HealthKit baby). So the nuts and bolts of Sunflower? Not too scary. But I wanted this app to look good.

So, I roped in my sister for some design magic. And my girlfriend's friend whipped up some animations that are just chef's kiss. We're talking SwiftUI for the looks, HealthKit for the brains, and some sweet Lottie animations to make it pop.

Proud Moments (aka Humble Brags)

  1. Those growing sunflower animations? They're hypnotic!
  2. The app's dead simple, but it works. I've been using it while testing, and guess what? I'm actually spending more time in the sun!
  3. We built this thing in a month. And it's out there in the App Store. Still can't believe it.

What I Learned

Building Sunflower taught me that you can actually pull off a full app in a month if you put your mind to it. It's not just a dream! Also, turns out working with other creative people makes everything better.

What's Next?

Marketing, marketing, and did I mention marketing? I've got this cool app, now I just need to tell the world about it. If you've got any bright ideas (sun pun intended), I'm all ears!

So that's Sunflower - my little app that's trying to make the world a brighter place, one sunbath at a time. Give it a try, your body might just thank you for it!

Built With

  • firebase
  • healthkit
  • lottie
  • revenuecat
  • swiftui
Share this project:

Updates

Submission history