OneThing was developed by Thomas Dizon, Jessica Tan, Dillon de Silva and Jennifer Tan for the 2023 SYNCSHACK 24HR Hackathon. The following information is from our devpost submission which can be accessed here.
This project was a prize winnner in the category of Best Pitch for the competition.
Everyone has that one thing in their life they wish they could make time for. It could be an old hobby, polishing a new skill or spending time with loved ones.
In the face of ultimate control of our time through powerful productivity applications, the task to set aside some time each week for the things we love proved to be a daunting one.
It felt like there was always something more important to do. We needed to narrow the scope, and focus on just one thing at a time…
And thus, OneThing was born.
It's simple. The app asks you what that OneThing is. It then asks you when you have an hour to spare within the next week and schedules into your Google Calendar. Only once the activity is complete can you input a new OneThing.
The beauty of the app is in its simplicity. It narrows the scope and prompts the user to focus purely on completing OneThing at a time.
In doing so, it takes away the stress of seeing how it may fit into our schedules alongside our recurring responsibilities.
We prototyped the app using Figma and developed the app using React Native.
A prominent challenge we faced was integrating the Google Calendar feature. It required extensive testing and research to interface with the Google Calendar API. Only through grit, determination, teamwork and a bit of luck were we able to get it up and running within the 24 hours.
Furthermore, not all members of the team were proficient in React Native. More experienced members of the team dedicated much of their time assisting less experienced members. This allowed us to join forces and produce an app that we are all proud of.
We’re proud to have come up with the idea. The ideation process was extensive and exhaustive. We juggled many complex ideas and ended up settling on a very simple one. We figured the best solutions are to problems that people didn’t know they had.
We are also proud of the long hours we put in to finish the project. Members of our team sacrificed valuable hours of sleep (and perhaps some sanity) to realise the product.
We learnt many things about each other, about the product development process and about ourselves. It was an experience we will all cherish. All members of the team gained valuable experience in ideation, product development and teamwork.
We have developed a working prototype for OneThing that is integrated with Google Calendar. It does not have all of the features we would need for a market-ready app. We would look to implement:
A diary where you can see your history of OneThings The ability to adjust the duration for your OneThing to suit your needs The ability to edit your upcoming OneThing if required and more. We would also look to conduct extensive user and usability testing to make the experience more intuitive for our users.