uniMind

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  uniMind Logo

Inspiration

As second-year college students, balancing school, work, social, and health aspects of our lives can often be a struggle. We lack a sense of control, stability, and organization. We needed an app with a simple UI yet concrete accessibility to health and wellness education. As complete beginners in app development, we were inspired to create an application that was relatable and useful for us as college students.

What it does

UniMind is a space for university students to access fitness and wellness exercises. They are able to look at detailed descriptions of different tips and exercises without having to search them up. Students can even filter different tips and exercises as well as add new ones to the card categories. This allows them to keep track of their well-being as students.

How we built it

The first step was to research. As mentioned before, our app needed to be relatable to us and useful in our daily lives. We thought about all the problems college students face and how we can fix them. The biggest one was physical and mental well-being. The problem college students face is that they need coordination within their student lives. We decided to create an app that gave an answer for fitness, mental health, and academic life.

The second step in our process was to imagine what we wanted to see in our app. We picked fitness and wellness to be our first and main features as the academic organization can be integrated through calendars and goals-making. We then imagined what we wanted the UI to look like, if we wanted tabs, columns, pictures, etc. Lastly, we imagined how we wanted each section to connect, using filters or links.

The third step was to solidify our plan. We decided on creating a home page where there is not too much information and easy-to-navigate cards that take you to the health and wellness tips. We also decided to use appealing images as well as appropriate fonts for aesthetics. We also made sure to have a way to organize by choice, so we decided to add a filter. Along with a filter, we made sure to give the user an option to add their own exercises and tips to each wellness card so it is personalized. The app’s content also had to be understandable so we added the name, equipment needed, directions for the exercises, and what category they belong in. The last step in planning was to decide the logo of our app. We needed something short and concise, relating back to university students. Hence, uniMind was created.

The fourth step was to create and test. To create, we first needed to pick a programming language and a platform. As new app developers, we chose to learn how the Swift programming language and how the iOS simulator Xcode works. After learning the basis of our app, we learned how to create different screens and connect them. Lastly, we added the filters and created features of the app. After making the basic structure and framework of the application, we added the basic content and made sure to add images as well as accessible card buttons. The beneficial aspect of using Xcode was that as we created and edited the code, we were able to see the live changes due to the hot reload. This way we could test while coding.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we faced as new developers was learning how Swift and Xcode worked. We took this as a learning opportunity and made sure we knew how and what we wanted to code. We were able to spend enough time learning and applying so we could also gain a new skill. The second challenge we faced as a group was time constraints. We had so many ideas we wanted to add to this app, but due to the learning curve being large and having 24 hours, we were not able to implement every aspect of the application.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our biggest accomplishment was learning how to develop an app and actually making it work. In our learning process, we each tried various techniques using different languages and platforms and came up with the best one that worked with Swift and Xcode. Another accomplishment of ours that we’re proud of is the team management and collaboration skills we developed. We were able to each voice our opinions on the development of this application and used everyone’s ideas to create it.

What we learned

As mentioned before, we learned how to create an app from scratch and actually display a working application. We learned how Swift and Xcode worked and how hot reload allows us to see the updates live on the iOS simulator. We also learned how to create, filter, and connect multiple screens on the app. The last thing we learned was how to work as a development team. We learned how to collaborate using everyone’s ideas and also learned how to create a project in the time given with a given theme and story.

What's next for uniMind

As our name suggests, uniMind is for university students. Currently, our app allows students to look at wellness tips and fitness exercises and even add new tips and exercises to the cards. However, eventually, we want to be able to create new cards and have the users create new cards that can be academic and career-goal-specific. Next, we wanted an award system, something college students can look forward to. So we would create badges or stickers for those who complete given goals from the app to promote well-being. The next thing was to create a sense of community, so we would have universities collaborate and have their own personalized versions of the app where they can promote their well-being programs and have discussion posts where students can connect with each other within the university. Lastly, we would want to make our app more aesthetically pleasing by adding a color palette as well as giving the option to edit the appearance of the app.

Built With

• swift
• xcode