Jaedye Development pt. 1

So yeah, Jaedye it is. My teammates are pretty keen on it. Personally, I’m less so. But I guess seeing as my previous two assignments have chiefly been my idea, I can try to sit out on the ideation stage in this one.

We met with Bjorn at his e27 offices at Block 71. Pretty cool place, pretty much what you expect a startup office to look like, really. Open concept, couches, mini kitchen, games, and interesting things on the wall. The meeting room is quite standard, if a bit too IKEA-ey. Aanyway.

He outlined his concept for Jaedye, which will be an attention trainer (like Forest), with integrated social and gamification features (like Fitbit), with support for different modes in order to provide mind and mindfulness training. He also wants it to be a native Android app, as mentioned, in order for it to be combined with the iOS app that the other team is developing.

He also provided UI mockups and assets, so we could get started faster with an existing design (that will be consistent across platforms). Which is just as well, since we have to learn Android pretty much from scratch (well, building upon our existing Java knowledge).

I’m working on the web backend, providing the API endpoints to power the social features. Probably going to do it the same way I did the last few projects: Node.JS + Express + Postgres on Heroku, simply because it’s so damn simple to deploy and also provides HTTPS for free. Convenient.

The rest (Chi Thanh, Derek, and Van) will be focusing on learning Android and coming up with an MVP within the next two weeks. Partially also because they have Android phones whereas I have an iPhone. Still, I’ll be the one doing the internal UI/UX reviews since I’ll be the relatively fresh pair of eyes to look at the app, and we can hopefully iterate quickly.

Still not terribly excited about the project. Maybe it’s because I’m not super convinced that the pain exists / this is how we should resolve that pain. Still, a project is a project. I’ll give it my best and see where it goes.

Once again, into the breach.