This project was created during my App Development Course at XU Exponential University of Applied Sciences. In a team of three we had about six weeks to implement a native android app featuring:
- Geolocation services
- Data persistency
- Master-Detail views
- Custom user preferences
- Remote API integration
Coming up with an idea
We choose to use the design thinking processes to come up with an interesting idea that could satisfy all of these requirements and solve an actual problem. We came to the conclusion that most of us eat the same boring meals every day due to a lack of time and inspiration after work/uni.
To solve this problem our app should send the user a few random recipes received from a public API upon leaving a predefined geofence.
Building a prototype
After settling on an idea we used Adobe XD to develop a prototype. A few mockups can be found above, if you want to see more check out our live preview. While prototyping we decided to add a list of favorite meals and a shopping list in case the user decides to cook one of the recipes.
Implementation
In the implementation, we made use of Android’s MVVM approach to handle and display our data. We retrieved recipes from spoonacular’s free API and saved them locally using Android Room to save bandwidth and improve performance.
SCRUM was used to facilitate our team's collaboration efforts. Choosing a sprint length of one week with standups every other day and a review at the end of every week turned out to be a good fit for our team and project. We also managed to mostly stick to this schedule and worked regularly on developing the app.