Inspiration
We were watching YouTube videos one day and somehow got onto the topic of how "followers" on social media follow you like zombies after the zombie apocalypse. We remembered a video by one well-known "YouTuber" about how, every year, they managed to not achieve their goal of working out and that, if they could involve their viewers, they would exercise more as they had motivation to not be embarrassed in front of so many people. This got us thinking that, if we could involve both the zombie aspect and the social media aspect of "following", we could make an app that would effectively motivate users to get their regularly needed exercise. Rather than public embarrassment, we instituted a point system; in place of "following" someone, users can crawl after their friends, family, and favorite celebrities, all the while racking up their own points as runners from their personal zombie hordes.
How it works
Zomblr is a unique socialmedia/excercise app that uses peer involvement and a fun backstory to motivate you to get the physical activity you need! Each user registers to make an account as a “runner”, a survivor of the zombie apocalypse running away from the zombie hordes that want to eat your brain. You can follow friends to become part of their zombie horde to motivate them to run as well. Once your own horde has run a certain number of hours, it’s your turn to run away before they catch you! Running awards you survival points and being caught by the zombies deducts them. The time you log running counts both toward your own “runner" count and toward the collective count of the zombie horde of each person you’ve followed. Reaching safehouses gives you days off to recuperate before your horde finds you and you’re off again. The flexible, user-determined “zombie threshold” allows a you to adjust how much running you need to do compared to your zombie followers. Zomblr’s fun mix of social media, storyline, and exercise app makes getting physical activity more fun and interesting to do, leading to a healthier and more humorous physical life.
Challenges I ran into
The entire team came into this project with little to no experience with Xcode and Swift, only our passions and a great idea, but we were ready to take on the challenge. Learning a both a new language and a new editor required a lot of hard work, Googling, and persistence, but we enjoyed the challenge. Most mentors and other students did not know much about iOS programming, so we had few resources to draw upon other than the Internet.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We are proud of our functional, dynamic, and aesthetically pleasing mobile app, especially considering our lack of previous knowledge of the language. We are proud of our ability to adapt and learn to apply this new language in an app that is everything we set out to achieve and much more.
What I learned
We learned to write classes from scratch in Swift and the basics of Objective-C. We also learned how to implement databases, such as Parse, efficiently and effectively into an app. We learned how to use Xcode, the first time for many of us, and refined our design skills. Finally, we also learned the benefits of venturing outside the limits of our comfort zones.
What's next for Zomblr
We plan to add more animations and a cooperative (rather than competitive) aspect of the app. We hope to implement more safeguards for users and security against spamming. We believe that Zomblr has nowhere to go but up.
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