Note: My project was originally title “Fractals”, but due to an exciting, dramatic, and unforeseen conclusion to the production of my app I renamed it to “Relax.” Read on!

For this project, I made an Android app that used an animation to give the user something relaxing to look at on their phones. I know that people generally take any spare time during their day to scroll through social media and often times end up more stressed than when they started. So, my app used a generative circular spiral animation with a few different color scheme options to let the user turn their brain off for a second and relax 🙂 check out my code on GitHub!

What didn’t go so well?

Like I mentioned before, this project did not go super smoothly for me. About 16 hours before the project (that I’d been chugging along on for a few weeks) was due, I lost everything! How? Well, I was click clacking in Terminal, organizing my files, and I thought to myself “hm maybe I should change my directory names so it’s more efficient for me to type them in Terminal.” So I changed a few folder names, and immediately realized that none of my source files in Android Studio could reference each other and my project had disappeared! After searching for almost an hour, emoting to a classmate, emailing my professor, and resetting my project files to an older version from a few hours prior, nothing was working. So I decided to cut my losses and start anew, trying to preserve key parts of my project to still give the user an analogous experience and still have something to present in critique.

• Ultimately, my project only had two widgets. This was disappointing to me because I was looking forward to learning how to use the seekbar, and how to let the user customize their animation more in-depth. (Using more radio buttons & the seekbar).
• Since I was re-doing my project somewhat distressed, the more I had to debug the more frustrated I got. This probably slowed my process down a bit.
• Originally, I had my Processing sketches working in Android Studio and my emulator. But, once I lost my project, I was not able to get those up and running in my final version.
• While I was re-doing my project, I was focused so heavily on the technical side. This didn’t leave much brain-power for me to push myself creatively. Ideally in the future I’ll be able to make apps that I can be proud of both technically and creatively!

What went well?

One of my main philosophies in life is what I like to call “fortunately unfortunately.” So, unfortunately I had a lot of trouble and my final product was not what I envisioned it to be. But fortunately it was not all bad, I learned a lot, and feel a lot more strong as an Android Studio user now!

• I really like Processing,  so it was exciting for me to get to figure out how to get Processing and Android Studio working together.
• Creating two versions of my app gave me a lot of practice using widgets, classes, activities, and layout variations. This was a good opportunity for me to gain confidence using these, because as an iOS user Android Studio had been pretty intimidating up until this point. And I can catch myself before I make simple mistakes / correct my mistakes easier!
• In terms of creativity,  I think the graphic design (albeit simple) fits nicely with my concept. The colors are pleasing, and the layout lends itself well for the user to be able to figure out what to do.
• Also, I think I did a good job maintaining key parts of my project with regards to UI/UX. Despite the fact that it was much simpler than what I was intending to produce, there still were relaxing animations for users to lose themselves in, and they could customize the color schemes. My project concept stayed strong, and I believe I problem solved in a productive way. Even though I did not get my Processing canvases running in tandem with my app (I didn’t have the time / energy to do that again), I think using gifs gives the user the same experience, and I still made gifs off of the same Processing code I was using before.

What would you do differently next time?

• NOT CHANGE MY DIRECTORY NAMES PARTWAY THROUGH THE PROJECT
• PUSH VERSIONS OF MY PROJECT CONSISTENTLY TO GITHUB
• Anyways!
• Upon reflection on this experience, it might be wise to work more in the scope of my comfort zone. Even though I enjoyed learning how to get Processing working in Android Studio, in the end I was unsuccessful in doing so for my app. I think if I’m working under a deadline, and for whatever reason need to redo everything last minute, I should be able to do so with less catastrophizing.
• Creatively, I think I could have done more research into other meditation-specific apps to get a better idea of how my app could be different. I did a little research, but perhaps if I did more I could have been more intentional with design decisions.