Sit: A beautiful, simple, meditation timer
The only app I use every day from a non-major tech company is called Equanimity. I’ve been using it for years, even though it hasn’t been updated since 2012. When I finish my meditation and it prompts me to write a journal entry, I choke up on my iPhone 6 to type out whatever thoughts came to me during my session.
When you start programming in any language, it helps to start by building a few small things that you want.
Since the beginning of Built in Public a few months ago, I told you I was going to build a meditation timer; it’s something I really want.
Right now it’s called Sit. I’m working on it with my friend Richard Burton and here’s what the final product will look something like:
Below are some progress shots from the last day or two.
On the left are the three fields you’ll set for your meditation session. The timer will go away, that’s just for testing purposes. Seconds and Minutes are tappable to toggle to the other one so you can set your session up however you like. On the right is Richard’s setup to test the animation that plays as your session takes place.
So often I forget that the most polished apps start off as an ugly mess to test. As part of Built in Public, I want to show you how it all comes together.
Once Richard sent me the code for the animation, I wired up the version above on the left with the animation. I call it water filling since it’s blue, starts at the bottom and rises. Your session is done when the water reaches the top.
If you meditate like I do, you put your phone behind you and don’t look at it so you’ll likely never see this. We still want to nail the details.
On the above left, the first working version of the animation with a nice ugly blue. On the above right, the top line is a cooldown marker. When the “water’ reaches that line, a chime will play letting you know that your session is almost finished. When you first start your session, a line will appear at the bottom of the screen, and a chime will play, if you’ve set a warmup time as well.
What’s left? Fonts, colors, animations, keeping your session settings in CoreData so you can open the app and start a session with a single tap. We’re going to do some interesting logging visualizations and data export too.
That’s Sit! We’re hoping to have it out by the end of the year.
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Zack Shapiro is the creator of Built in Public, a project studio and year-long experiment in creativity and transparency. StopCoin is the first project to come out of Built in Public. Zack also founded Luna, a nighttime delivery company based in San Francisco, which was acquired in early 2014.
