RSA Boards

Our App intention and Summary

features of the app:

give people different environments to relax in. 
Using the binaural 3D sound, we can give the illusion of a 3D space, larger than the one that they might currently be in. Using this you can create an immersive environment by having things passing near the users ears. 
we also wanted to input an interactive element by having the scenes change slightly inside when breathing becomes controlled. 

scene example: City Scape
A distant hum of the city itself, people going about their daily lives. Traffic, Overhead distant planes, Boats passing on river, seagulls.
interactive elements:
When your breathing is steady and controlled the loud traffic shall dissipate, the weather in the scene shall improve  and the sun will come out. Breathing steady will slowly make the environment quitter and in turn more relaxing, things shall become more distant, planes in the sky shall pan from ear to ear as will boats on the river. 

how this achieves the aim of the brief:

Our app hits the brief because it cultivates peace of mind, and creates the right environment to possibly make people have an experience of transcendence. It also targets people who would normally not practice anything spiritual because of time constraints in their life, therefore opening up spiritual practice to more people. 

The summary of our idea is as follows:

THE AIM

Create something to help people engage in spiritual practise.

THE QUERY

Why are people not currently engaging in spiritual practice?

How do we change this?

RESEARCH
We did some data gathering and found that the main reasons was that people didn't have enough spare time to use to relax or spend doing nothing, a shortage of personal space to create the right environment, and a lack of understanding about what you have to do to be spiritual.

OUR SOLUTION
Use binaural 3D sound app to give people a virtual space to be spiritual in, which can be used even when there are lots of people around. This would make it perfect for use when travelling or at any other period when 'downtime' occurs.


TARGET AUDIENCE
Busy professionals, or anyone spending lots of time travelling that can use it when on the train or bus. 

Menu Showcase

This is a video we created to show how the menu system in our app is easy and simple to use. 

This is a video we created to show how each scene may behave once that a person has relaxed their breathing. 

Keep on moving

This is what we want our logo to look like whilst in movemnt.

This is how we want the app to behave when turned.

This is the logo of the app that will appear on start-up, the logo will stay on the screen un-till the screen is tapped. 

This video shows how no matter which way the device is, the apps scenes will always face the user. 

This is what we imagine the app to look like when it has been started up, clicked on, then a scene is selected. 

Planning it out.

We had our meeting with Johnny the other day, it went well. He liked our idea, seeing the potential of an app that can take your mind to other places. However there are still a few minor things that need to be addressed. In order to make sure we have the users full attention and involvement, we want to ensure the user is engaging with the product, almost being made spiritual without even knowing it. One idea is to use the bluetooth headset of a phone, to control the breathing of a user. The more controlled their breathing, the calmer the scene may get. This could almost make our app into a fun game the requires the smallest amount of attention while demanding the users full attention.

We believe that if an app controls how someone is behaving, it may be very successful. It will be a fun, relaxing, spiritual way of engaging the user, rewarding them with a greater experience as they obey the spiritual guidelines of the app.

This is a quick storyboard of how we imagine the app to be used. As mentioned before, we want the app to be as simple to use as possible, we want to relieve stress, not cause it through an overly complicated menu system. We also are aware our target market is busy people, people who don't have the time to normally perform spiritual activities. We want the app to look sleek and sexy, not like a stereotypical spiritual app, this is because we don't want people to be driven away by their view of spirituality.      

After some more logo design and development, we have decided to go with the cloud logo as it fits in best with our app. 

Thinking relaxed

In order to come up with a relaxing interface for our app we need to address some problems that may arise in the development process. The first problem is, in order for the app to flow well, it needs a easy to use interface in order the app it the lull people into a state of willing relaxation, before they even listen to the binaural 3D events. We hope to achieve this through a simplistic design that is colour coded.

The colours we believe should be used for our app are lighter, softer and generally easy on the eyes. 

This is the type of colour pallet we want, not too many colours but just enough for a distinctive interface. We're still wondering what shape to make these icon, whether to have them floating or not and if there is need for writing on these icons or just a sound preview. 

These are some icons we've created of places we personally find relaxing. It uses the colour pallet we previously selected, to show the user where they will be taken to. We believe this may be the best way to present our environments, the text will not be present as to add an air of mystery to the app. All the icons will have moving properties, when clicked the icon shall take up the full screen. We intend for the app to be quite dark as one again, it add a state of mysteriousness and relaxation.

  

This is just a quick low quality button test we decided to do. 

We have a name... Drumroll please.

After thinking hard about what we wanted to call our app we realised it was a lot harder to come up with a name, for two reasons. Reason one was that there are a LOT of apps out there with various names already taken. Reason two was that it's just hard to come up with a catchy name.

So we took to the thesauraus website in search for other ways to say, Spiritual, Transport and Holiday. Eventually after a lot of search we came across utopia and decided to call in YOUtopia because our app  is going to be more personal... however it was already taken.

Back to the drawing board we went, eventually settling on Envisage. This words means "to form a mental image of; visualize; contemplate" which is exactly what we intend our app to do. 

Changing it yet again

Well we had a talk with Matt, and it seems we have outgrown the coffee commute for a app instead. We believe the idea behind the app is strong enough on its own. As long as it has clean polished visuals to sell the product, it should be fine. The only problem with this is that we now need to do a bit of research into apps for various tablet and mobile devices to get a better understanding of what is needed.

Another thing we need to do is ask the public what there most relaxing environment is or could be. This approach will help us understand what environments to have available in the app, some environments might be relaxing for us but might not be for another person.

Trope is one app that was shown to us, it displays various colours on screen when you touch it, depending on which way you drag your finger it changes the sound generated. Apart from the obvious properties the app itself has catered towards relaxation and feeling spiritual, the app itself has a great yet simple to use menu system. This is something that should be highly considered for our app.

This is another relaxation app, it is more heavily focused on the visual and sound working together. All you do is focus on a ball that bounces around the screen while a beam of light shines from a central point. Sound is also made when the ball makes contact with the outer edges of the screen.

Ambiance is another great app that allows you to download a whole host of stock sounds in order to relax you, some of the sounds include rain hitting a tent, a sand storm in the Sahara and a thunder storm. This is what we aim to do with our app. The different between this app and our is that this app has stock sounds that are not Binaural 3D sound so they don't have the same impact. We also intend to have scenarios that have multiple sounds in the to create an image in the users head to give them the impression they're actually in the intended place of choice. We can however learn from the methods used in this app. Ambiance allows you to find any sound you would like to unwind to, we would like to use this same approach but instead of stock sounds we want environments.

Asleep is another app that uses stock sound, however the sounds are terrible quality. The app has a timer so you can set a certain sound to run for a specific time. The app is meant to send you off to sleep by using a various array of sounds such as, a person typing on a keyboard, bird song and much more. Although this app has a clever enough name, that's pretty much it.  

IChillout is yet again another app that uses stock sound to get people in a more relaxed mood, I would be worried that they're the same as our idea however none of these apps seem to use binaural 3D sound. The whole point of our app is to create an environment in a persons head where they can relax or self contemplate. All these apps seem to just be stock sounds to send you to sleep. 

One app we've found that uses binaural 3D is used to scare the user. This app is called Papa Sangre, it is a game that uses the imagination of the user as a core tool to drive the experience. 

Using binaural 3D sound the app puts you in a situation where a monster is chasing you, all the user can do to get away is to tap the screen. The user also has the ability to turn, however if the screen is tapped too fast, the character can fall over.  This is so simple but yet so effective,  it has the magic we want our app to have.