"GoodListens" Mobile App Development
“GoodListens” Social Podcast App
Mobile App Development - Computer Programming - Team project
The Goal
Over the course of three weeks, plan and develop a social podcast app using React Native, in which users can track, share, and rate podcasts and follow other users to keep up to date on what their friends are listening to. This project was completed with two other team members for a final project in a mobile development course.
The Process
Gather Inspiration - Our team needed to figure out exactly what we wanted our podcast app to be. We were inspired by the quantified-self movement and tools that allow users to track and share information with friends. Apps like GoodReads and Spotify, specifically its “Your year Wrapped” in review feature, were our main influences as we moved into our planning phases.
Features List - Next we collaborated to come up with a list of every feature we thought would be useful for the app to have. Once the list was made, we ordered by priority level and removed features that were redundant and expanded upon features that would be more complicated to implement. Because of time constraints, we knew we would not finish every feature, but the list would serve as a guide for us to organize progress throughout the app’s development.
Sketching and Refining Design - Next, we took the time to make sketches and refine the design for the app’s key pages to give the team some direction in terms of UI and visual design as we began to build out the app.
![appsketches.png](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e0e40449b577229ef4d80fa/1578441479473-U4LKTUMIONFUFOU06S5F/appsketches.png)
Front and Backend Development - The app was developed using React Native and all data was stored using a Firebase Firestore database. The team coordinated together to individually work on different aspects of the app and merged and collaborated via GitHub.
The Result
![friends.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e0e40449b577229ef4d80fa/1578449573780-R96BU8KK7FVCXWRU9VQG/friends.jpg)
![feed.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e0e40449b577229ef4d80fa/1578449512205-4OH8PRIUZLZUEYLJZZP8/feed.jpg)
![episodeDetails.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e0e40449b577229ef4d80fa/1578454691581-7M4O8JANS6UW8YQXPHSR/episodeDetails.jpg)
![trackedEpisodes.jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e0e40449b577229ef4d80fa/1578454712479-DUUPE0H84NKF5IZS1AJL/trackedEpisodes.jpg)
While we were not able to implement every feature we initially came up with, we were able to produce a fully functional app that could store, access and manipulate multiple points of user data. The app displays a feed to see the activity of followed users, allows users to add podcast titles to a library, track and rate individual podcast episodes, and even stream podcast audio. For the amount of time we had, we were quite pleased with the amount of functionality we were able to implement and the app was well-received by instructional staff.
Challenges
Due to time restraints and the nature of the class we were not able to focus very much of our time on the visual design and UX of the app itself. Most of the team’s effort was spent building out features and making sure data retrieval and manipulation were working properly. Had time allotted we would have liked to build a stronger visual identity, made sure UI followed UX best practices and conducted some usability tests to refine the design and function of the app.