Hey everyone, my name is Stephane Boutet and this is the beginning of my capstone project for the Launch Your First App program.
I come from a background in stem cell biology, genomics and single cell gene expression. I’ve been learning iOS for the past 2 months.
Ultimately, my goal for learning iOS development is to make useful apps for my fellow biologists in the laboratory. I am doing this mostly for fun as I always wondered what it would be to have an app on The App Store…(I’ll let you know how it goes!)
I’m looking forward to updating this project log as I progress to completing my capstone project!
So far, here are my plan for my first App for the CWC capstone project:
MVP for APP.001
Description:
Timer dedicated to experimental scientists (Biologists, molecular and cellular biologists)
Only 2 lab timers in App store for iPad (which is strange since people have phones but not iPad!?)
Requirements:
Main screen (HomeScreen) shows a deck where users can add timers from a library to Timers. They can select individual or group of timers or, alternatively, create a new one and directly add it to the deck. They can visualize all timers counting down or up at the same time. They can also select a timer for a detail view of the selected timer.
(Note: After a quick search, I couldn’t find a timer for scientists on iPhone. I did find 2 timers for scientists for iPad (with poor designs) which is strange since iPad are not super common in research laboratories?!)
Users can organize timers in groups/experimental protocols
Users can set timers as counting up or counting down (99 hours, 60 minutes and 60 seconds)
Timers are accurate and persistent (timer can continue where it left off after dismissing page or app? (use Date to keep track of Timer)
Users can set Favorite timers (“Favorites”)
Users signs up and sign in/out (Firebase Auth and firestore) => This is useful the future such as building a user base for future Apps, updates, etc or gamification for community based ranking (mostly out of scope for MVP - MVP has only registration, sign up and sign in and profile)
Users have a profile
No or very limited gamification (fireworks at the end of timer and count of completed timers)
App has original sounds for alarm and transitions between pages
users can select an alarm sounds for each timer
Initial library is populated with a few protocols (SPRI Select protocol, 10x single cell gene expression V4, TBD), load protocol from JSON files
Need a clean/simple design, easy to use app and professional interface (very important since it is a classic differentiator in this space).
Free version without pre-loaded protocols (goal: gain users and get feedback and make a useful app)
It may be possible to have a Paid version with pre-loaded protocols (I need to do a market study on this.)
Hi All,
quick update on my project.
I have the main part of the app working.
I have the onboarding in good shape and now I am working on the integration with firebase (authentication and firestore) … which brings me to re-evaluate the architecture (with clean DI, MVVM/MVC and user data DB) … I am doing things in reverse it looks like … can you tell I am not a software engineer!!! I also spend less time on Figma even though it is a great tool. I found that I usually complicate the design in Figma.
Few things I am learning build an app:
Start your App from the user auth and user data as the core of the app
Look for the cleanest and simplest design in Xcode first (function first) (I am a beginner in swiftUI so don’t kill yourself with complicated design)
build assets (colors, images to reinforce the swift design)
doing a lot of prototyping to test specific technical aspect helps
my plan is to finish the firebase and firestore UserDB and the images assets done by the end of the November. I should be left with exploring revenueCat and check out testing…
Slow progress and so much to learn!