Timeout

The adding groups screen
The settings screen
The main app launcher screen
UI design on the whiteboard
Easter egg :)

Inspiration

Our inspiration was the common problem of losing track of time when using social media. One moment a couple of minutes has gone by, and the next it's been 2 hours. Our app lets the user set time restrictions for themselves in real time when they click to open an app, so they never spend longer than they want to on social media.

What it does

Our app is an app launcher for Android. Whenever a user opens an app, a screen to select how much time they want to use the app for appears instead. Once the user selects an amount of time, they are brought to the app they selected with a countdown timer overlay. Once the time runs out, it kicks them out of the app and they can't open that app, or any other app in a preconfigured group, for the cooldown period they specify. The user preconfigures which apps to apply the restrictions to, how long the cooldown period is, what time options they have and what apps to group together.

How we built it

The app is built using Flutter, although it is only for Android currently.

Challenges we ran into

It would take a lot of time and effort to create our own custom Android app launcher, so to simulate this, we display a list of all installed apps within our app, and you select an app to open from there. Additionally, the functionality for most settings doesn't exist as this would take too long, however the UI for the settings has been done.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud that we were able to built a proof of concept for an app that we agree we'd actually use within 2 days.

What we learned

We learned how to rapidly prototype, and how to work in a team effectively with others we didn't know.

What's next for Timeout

The next thing to do would be integrate our app idea into a fully fledged app launcher, so the experience of opening apps and selecting a time is seamless. We'd also like to polish up the UI and the code if we're developing for production.