The goal of the project is to give a support system to users who want to improve themselves mentally and give them a safe space to express their emotion. The client reached out to Vilantis to build a mobile app that allows users to listen to recordings from Tyku’s curated list of creators. Users are also able to record themselves and write notes as a way to express themselves, like how their day went. They may also treat the recording feature as a journal so they can remind themselves about high points and low points of their lives.

Key Application Features:

• • Feature-Rich Audio Player – The core feature of the app is to have users listen to Tyku’s content creators. Our audio player not only plays simple audio, users can also trigger the audio to stop playing either by ‘Repeat X times’ feature or our Time-based feature.
  • Record Audio & Take Notes – Users can record and upload audio privately to help them on their self-actualizing journey. The recording feature also shows a notebook where users can jot down notes which can be useful to complement their recordings.
  • Organize Playlists – The app boasts a Playlists feature for users who want to collect and curate audio recordings from primary content creators into their own playlist.
  • Share Recordings – Users can send playlists and recordings to their friends privately.
  • Friendly Interface for Content Creators – Using Django, the client along with Tyku’s content creators can easily upload recordings, create playlists, categorize playlists, and more.
  • Subscription-Based Monetization – Some playlists and recordings in the app require a subscription from its users, be it 1 month, 3 months, or 6 months, giving the client a revenue stream for the app.
  • Display Non-Intrusive Ads for Free Users – Google AdMob integration for displaying ads for the users, who want to enjoy the app for free.
  • Support Multiple Languages – The app supports English and Lithuanian, however this can be extended to support multiple languages with minimal code changes.
  • Push Notifications – Tyku can broadcast custom push notifications to its users to remind them to use the app.
  • Deep Linking – Users can share links of playlists and recordings through any messaging platform. Receiving users can open the link and they will be redirected to the app.

Creating the Tyku App

When the scope and requirements of the project were finalized, we started our Data Modeling phase wherein we identified the best approach to represent the data to be transferred between the backend and the mobile app. We also chunked the requirements into granular and concise tasks for our development team to work on.

Initial development revolved around the backend in order to ensure that development of the mobile app would not have any impediments, as most of the app’s functionalities involve communication to the backend. Doing it this way makes us use our development time efficiently.

Jumping onto mobile app development, we identified features to be prioritized and started development from there. We also identified and implemented UI components that show up in different parts of the app frequently. Having reusable UI components makes it incredibly fast to implement new pages in the app.

The project had two-week sprints, which ends with Vilantis handing off incremental builds to the client for testing and to get feedback.

Technologies Used

Flutter

The mobile app was built using Flutter, which allows us to create Android and iOS versions of Tyku using only a single code base. Had we developed the app in Android Kotlin and iOS Swift independently, we would have doubled or even tripled the development time due to extra development and testing. Moreover, the beauty of building Flutter components is its reusability, most screens we developed used buttons that we only wrote once hence saving time for us and the client.

Django

We decided to use Django as our backend framework because it allows our developers to build features quickly and securely. It also comes with a user-friendly admin interface that allows our clients and their content creators to create and edit playlists and audio tracks.

Heroku

We deployed the backend to Heroku because of its ease-of-use, scalability, affordability, and reliability. Heroku is a developer-friendly Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) that significantly reduces time and effort needed in deploying and maintaining servers and databases.

Firebase Analytics

Google Analytics and Firebase Push Notifications were also integrated to help the client understand its users better and keep them engaged in the app.