I had an idea to do something a bit more non-traditional for your 21st birthday.
It all started with the thought of what the purpose of a gift truly was. There's the usual suspects, to either satisfy materialism or sentimentalism,
or something like that. But then I thought about what some of the greatest gifts ever given to me were. I think it was you. Spending time with you.
Getting to know you. Making memories. Now, is that something you can put a dollar tag on? No. Is it something that can be faked? No.
As you may know, we've been in this "medium-distance" relationship for almost three years now. We don't see eachother everyday.
Or even a couple of times a week. We make do with a few visits each month. I cherish each one of them. I really do.
So with this realization in mind, I began to think to myself... how can we capture a bit more of this and make our lives just a tad bit more magical?
I thought about how we interacted when we were not with eachother. A good portion of these interactions were us sharing things that we thought the other
person would love or were things that we loved ourselves. Like songs. Or posts. Or things of that nature. Media. Different types of media.
And then I thought about it a bit more. What was the difference between you sharing the newest B.E. song with the tongue dancing and eating lunch lyrics
in person vs. over text? Well, the answer has two parts. Over text, the way our distance dictates it, it is what I like to call "two-dimensional".
You send the song, I listen to it, I send a reaction message, and then that's that.
In person though, things are different. They're "multi-dimensional". They're an opportunity to create a lasting memory. Something that actual carries the relationship forward.
I remember us playing that song again while we sat outside that coffee shop behind my apartment. I remember us laughing and joking about it. Making our own versions of the lyrics.
That's the gift we give eachother. Love, life, and wishful thinking.
Us being madly in love in first-year.
So... it's my pleasure to announce to you... the Wishful app. Named after someone special... and how I end up feeling between each visit.
The idea is, everytime we want to share anything with eachother, we get to add in a live reaction. Now in its earliest version,
the capabilities of this app will be incredibly limited, but I'm going to commit to having the full release up by the end of the summer.
Till then, we're going to think hard about what features we want to add in this first testing version.
I genuinely do believe that we're going to have a lot of fun with this. It's going to be great. I basically have to learn two or three
new coding languages and like five new tools and softwares to get this whole thing going. I'm thinking of it as a fun challenge that we
get to work on together.
Progression
This section basically outlines how this project came to be and what I am researching and coding for this to be a real app.
Just above there was the audio file where I essentially outlined my first draft of what this project was going to be. It's seven minutes
long and ends abruptly, probably not worth listening to as well. But I've included everything since that's the spirit I'm going for here.
Then I took that and wrote a pretty basic draft of how I saw this project panning out.
Wishful App
An IOS-based application I’ll be coding for my girlfriend.
Context is that we’re in a medium-distance relationship. This is a setting where intimate moments are rarer than usual. We find comfort in sharing media that we think the other person would enjoy or something that we enjoyed ourselves. This is a one-dimensional exchange with a fairly predictable pattern. Send → Receive → View once → React → Done. As opposed to a multi-dimensional exchange, like something that would occur in real life, where for example: she plays a cool song she just heard on the radio → we listen to it together → as the song plays we have our individual reactions to it in realtime → can lead to a stronger memory. Goal is to recreate some of that magic on sharing intimate moments, but in a multi-dimensional form, and in a form factor that is suitable for a medium-distance relationship. At the same time, we won’t just be collecting a closet of dusty artifacts, we’ll be creating a library of memories that will last an eternity.
Features
Upload new media (books, articles, songs, videos)
Record your reaction
Process
Recipient of the book will partake in a ‘task’
‘Task’ would be to scan the photo of the book pages intermittently
Recorder will then receive the standard format text of those book pages
Recorder will then react to certain passages
Recipient can then receive the audio reactions
Can choose between active hearing (the audio plays automatically)
Or selective hearing (the reaction has to be selected)
