Chally - Social Media App
A platform to challenge friends
My Role
I was the project manager for Chally and was in charge of implementing a group chat feature with our own challenge feature in a team of three. We built a social media app where users could create groups and create challenges in those groups, where users could participate by posting images or videos to see who could perform the challenge the best. We were in an iOS program called Codepath, where different teams had to create an iOS app to present on demo day to other members and potential investors.
Tools: Xcode, Parse, Marvel (Mockup Website)
Skills: Project Management, Front-End Development, Back-End Development
Background
Main social media apps such as Instagram and Snapchat focus on sharing pictures or videos of your life and getting responses from friends and followers. Viral video or pictures usually occur whenever a user gets wide attraction for enacting a challenge, usually accompanied with a #"Challengetitle". The world starts to notice more users following a challenge and it creates a brief moment of excitement for others to participate in.
Problem
The main problem is that there does not seem to be a way to make challenges personal amongst friends.
Solution
We created a minimal viable product of a social media app where you could create groups amongst friends and create private challenges in those groups to keep track of posts.
Implementation
App Evaluation
We first wanted to lay the groundwork of the idea for Chally, we wrote six key points for the app in order to understand who our app was for:
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Category: Social Networking / Photo & Video
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Mobile: This app would be primarily developed for mobile but would perhaps be just as viable on a computer.
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Story: A platform for users to see current trending challenges and more importantly being able to challenge friends, family, and the world.
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Market: Any person who enjoys viewing current trends and participating in fun challenges.
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Habit: This app could be used as often or as little as possible depending on how free the individual is.
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Scope: First we will make it clear how easy it is to set up challenges with friends. Then it could evolve into a platform defining new challenges around the world. Being able to become a platform that interests other brands for advertising.
Storyboarding
We had a general idea of what was the main features of Chally:
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Be able to create groups
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Make private challenges
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View challenges in a group or in the main home page
Once we had a foundation, we began creating wireframes for the app:
Mockups
Having the wireframes, with the help of the team I created functional mockups for the Chally to help us with the UI for the app during production:
Production
We split the work into three parts:
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Chat feature & private challenges
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Profile & sign in
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Home page and creating public challenges
We started this project in March, during the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns, so we did not have a chance to meet in person.
However, that did not slow down our production. We created a Kanban board on Github and created multiples features that needed to implemented:
Examples of our kanban board on Github
We had weekly Zoom calls to go over the features we completed for the week and what we had planned for next week. Since we only 10 weeks to complete the app, we made sure to do biweekly meetings to make sure everything was going according to our milestones:
Our weekly sprints to make sure production was smooth
Results / What I learned
We presented our app in front of hundreds of Codepath remembers and potential investors over Zoom. The response from them was great and in the end, we created our vision of the app and were satisfied.
It was great to learn how to break up the project into different sprints to handle all the work. Creating weekly milestones and managing the kanban board was a great experience as it helped to grow my managing skills. More importantly, I got to see the app come to fruition.
Working with the front end and working with our database Parse, felt like an internship. Especially working online helped me to prepare for what a remote internship would feel like. Overall we created an app whose goal was to create stronger bonds amongst each other and have fun with those relations through challenges and participation.
