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.