MY INNER VOICE
Psychological guide by Psy.D. Helene Brenner helping women to find their inner voice.
Description
My Inner Voice is a psychological guide by Psy.D. Helene Brenner that helps people to deal with daily stress, improve their life and listen to their inner voice. Helene’s concept was to ensure closer communication and support for her clients when they need it, but the app is now available for everyone.
Back Story
Our client is a licensed psychologist who deals with issues related to female psychology. She designed a unique methodology that helps women to achieve peace by finding their inner voice.
Before we developed the application, Helene Brenner had been helping her patients at personal meetings. However, after a while, she discovered that by transferring to a new methodology, using recordings of her voice within an application, it would be possible to serve more clients simultaneously and reach a wider female audience. The doctor contacted us to create a relative mobile application.
Challenge
Dr Brenner had a list of requirements related to the application design, and it was here that we faced with the first challenge. It was necessary to implement the visual effect of waves, similar to those visible in an equaliser when listening to records. The client believes that such an effect allows people to calm down and relax.
When we embodied all the features, the next challenge appeared. As the application consists of a significant amount of media files, it was essential to adjust the steaming of video and audio to ensure their continuous and smooth playback.
Thus, the most significant challenges were as follows:
- Creating the visual analogue of an equaliser for My Inner Voice, to calm the mind of the users and help them reach maximum relaxation;
- Optimising the download and playback speed of all media files to provide their stable functioning without interruptions.
Visualisation Issue
The client provided us with references of how the requested effect should look. The waves were made up of 4 points, each of which moved along its own trajectory. Our goal was to create the animation of these points in accordance with their coordinates.
To deal with this challenge we accomplished an enormous scope of work with data. We determined coordinates of points at the exact moment of time and then we drew how they moved over time. As a result, we got lots of figures, which were structured and transformed into the desired animation. Here you can see what we were able to achieve.
Speed Issue
During the testing stage, we found that the download and playback speed of the innercizes (recordings of Dr Brenner’s voice, which are intended to help women in search of their inner voice) was too slow. This is a crucial factor to retain users, so we couldn't leave it as it was. It was decided to refuse to download videos from the server and implement a caching strategy instead.
When users open the application, the first thing they see are 3 introductory videos, after which they get access to other media files. Our strategy assumed that while the user watches introductory videos, the rest of the files would be cached to speed up their future playback. For these purposes, video files were compressed to a minimal size. As they will remain unchanged, it makes no sense to waste Internet resources, and at this time it is better to pull off content that will change from time to time.
Further Expansion
In spite of the fact that we were asked to develop the application for IOS only, it was decided to use Xamarin + MvvmCross to allow for the possibility of cross-platform development in future. Thereby, we will have a ready-made business logic if the client subsequently decides that her application should be accessible to Android users as well. This will facilitate our future work and speed up the implementation time.
Technologies
Web
Dapper
MSSQL
REST
C#
Mobile
Xamarin Native
MvvmCross
XIB
Microsoft Azure
Others
IIS
Audio/Video converter
Amazon Simple
Scope of Work
Team
1 Full-stack developer (102h)
1 Xamarin developer (318h)
1 Project manager
1 QA Engineer
The Result
The client obtained an iPhone application with the possibility of further expansion, due to cross-platform development. Files load quickly, so the meditation process will not be interrupted by audio stops. During the first week, the application was downloaded by 279 users. 32% of those people contacted Dr. Brenner for the first time. Approximately 79% of current clients noticed the app helps them to keep peace of mind when they can’t visit the doctor.
279 uploaded the app during first week
32% of app users became her clients
79% of people noticed the app helps them to keep peace of mind
Review
Dr. Helene Brenner
Author & Speaker — Lic. Psychologist
UAE, Dubai
"A-dev and the whole team did an excellent job on our app. They were professional diligent, consistent and excellent communicators throughout the project. We highly recommend them without hesitation!"
