THE BEGINNING
After junior Derek Lee couldn’t wear his contact lenses for six months due to dehydration, he was determined to google his dilemma and come up with the solution. The internet told him that his problem was dehydration. When he ran in cross country, he needed water to help his performance. From this, Lee decided that he needed a way to keep himself hydrated. However, the creation of the app itself, did not justify the problem. Lee later realized that the internet was incorrect — dehydration wasn’t actually the factor keeping him from being able to wear contacts.But from here, he developed the idea for Oueve.
As a cross-country runner and track-and-field athlete, Lee was always searching for ways to keep his water consumption levels high.
“People underestimate the power of hydration,” said Oueve marketing director junior Ethan Lin.
With Lin and junior Cheryl Chui by his side, Lee set out to create the app to track water consumption. To make their app different, they added in little animals that users could grow with increased water consumption as an incentive to drink water. Thinking about notifications, user interface and overall design, the team launched to produce the app.
THE APP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0CBwUamkpw
The digital scope of today along with the group’s unanimous usage of iPhones encouraged the trio to begin
designing the app for iOS software. A modern approach would rejuvenate and liven the publicity. After Lee began to learn the Swift programming language during winter break of his sophomore year, he used his newfound skills to program the app.
Lee took APCS last year and wanted to expand on that knowledge from just outside of Java. When he explained Oueve to Lin, the two got to work and fleshed out the idea.
Now, with a calendar of deadlines sitting in front of them, the trio rushes to meet their own set deadlines to get progress on the app rolling so that they can finally reap its benefits.
For help with the app, they can easily turn to various adults, including their parents, that provide them support when they need it.
“A lot of [the app’s progress] was self motivation,” Chui said. “If we don’t do anything, it just sits there.”
After coming up with the idea of the app, they started to program and design. After creating a rougher, choppy version, they began coding. Large changes made the modular design of the app much sleeker, with buttons and a water bottle to qualitatively track water consumption.
DESIGN
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8vpCDtuM_g
Slowly, large changes progressed to minute ones. The specific shade of blue. The logo. The font. Whether or not their starfish should have eyebrows. The illustrator wanted to make the app cute and trivial for its users.
The team found themselves debating the smallest details down to the pin.
The trio released the app into beta testing, where people were sent the app for trial
use. The trio decided to code a mass email so that each person that received it would get it with a personalized touch. Little did they know, it was a bit harder than they had expected.
AWARENESS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a9nXqZ_HJc
Now, the developers lag behind schedule. Despite their willing beta testers, upgrading delays in the system, kept the app from coming out in its original planned month of launch — July. The group is now forced to tackle app development along with school work.
But with the lags in progress, the group has felt public awareness of their app spark and their interest heighten. People began asking them for their progress on the app, wanting to be able to use it.
With public awareness of their Facebook page, website and Instagram, the developers behind Oueve know that people know that their app exists.
Now, it’s just a race for them to finish what they started.
