Titan Challenges

Virtual Fitness Challenges

2 followers

Virtual Fitness Challenges

2 followers

Your Fitness. Your Pace. Your Globe to Conquer. Participate in a variety of virtual fitness challenges and adventures that take you on a journey to explore some of the world's most famous trails. Collect virtual medals and share your achievements with friends!

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Launch tags:iOS•Health & Fitness•Fitness

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Maker

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This is about a 5 minute read (according to Google Speech) and is broken into two comments. So you may want to grab a tea or coffee. If you cba with that here is a TL:DR. TL:DR – Titan Challenges is a virtual fitness challenges app. I created the app using Xcode and Swift. The app uses Firebase Auth and Firestore for the user authentication and user data database. I use three mapping tools, Apple MapKit, Google Maps and Mapbox. It is my first venture into subscription based business model. I became a new dad towards the end of the development cycle which caused a massive delay, which resulted in me missing my original January 2023 release date. Hi all, My name is Dan and I just wanted to start off by thanking you at having a look at my new virtual fitness challenge app Titan Challenges. I wanted to use this comment to go into my experience of creating this app and the difficulties that I faced rather than shill the product to death. Titan Challenges is a fitness app that integrates various activities such as cycling, running, walking, swimming and daily steps. It offers over 50 virtual challenges inspired by famous trails and landmarks worldwide. Users can select from four difficulty levels according to their fitness goals. Progress is tracked visually via Google Maps integration and achievements are rewarded with virtual medals. The reads workout data from users Apple Health. It provides a unique, interactive approach to maintaining fitness from the comfort of home. I started Titan Challenges back in Jan 2022 (I had to check my first GIT commit to confirm that). And to say it is has been a titan of a challenge completing the app (bad pun intended) would be an understatement. I do not do app development for a living and can only work on it in my spare time as I have a full time job as well. I have had some tiny success in the past with a few apps I have released, but this was my first venture into the fitness sector. A few years ago I really got into swimming to try and lose some weight, whilst swimming I found myself wondering “I wonder how long it would take me to swim the length of the English Channel in the swimming pool”. I had a browse around and found a couple of apps that had what I was looking for. However a lot of these apps wanted to charge me £30+ one for challenge! Yes, okay they would send me a real medal after completing the challenge, but I wasn’t fussed about a piece of tat that would just live in my desk draw. So I started designing my own app. With the excitement of starting working on a new app the development started off well with a working barebones prototype being completed by the end of March. I have broken down the key development moments into some bite size chunks below. 🔥 Firebase as the backbone At the beginning of development I knew this would be an app where I would need user authentication and a user data database. Both I had never attempted before. I looked into using CoreData via CloudKit, but found out quickly that it was not fit for what I needed. After ripping it out I turned to Firebase. The implementation of Firebase Auth was a lot easier than I excepted, there is a great number of resources on YouTube to help with setting it up. Within a few days I had it so users were able to sign up, delete their accounts and reset emails and passwords as and when needed. The great thing about Firebase Auth is that upon account creation the user is given a unique userID which can then be used with Cloud Firestore to store user data. Firestore is a pay-as-you-go service where you pay for Writes, Reads and Deletes. So every time a user updates something in their profile or starts a new challenge, a cost is incurred on my side. Currently 100,000 of these actions costs around $0.18, however you get a total of 600,000 actions free per month before you’re charged. I calculated that the average user would most likely only perform around 100 actions a month. This meant I didn’t expect to be paying any Firebase costs until I had at least 5000 to 6000 active users a month. Another thing I found Firebase to be great for was deleting accounts and user data. With the use of Firebases Extension, when a user deletes their Firebase Auth account (An action that can be done in the app), Firebase automatically deletes all user information store in the database which is related to the deleted userID. Making database management a breeze. 🏃 The headache of user data I knew when I started developing that app that I didn’t want to store any user health data in my cloud database or in the app itself. I don’t like the idea of other apps having access to my health data, so I decided my app would be read only. This meant that I have to use Apple Health as my source of truth. Whenever Titan Challenges is launched it gets the latest data from Apple Health. The user can set what data Titan Challenges reads, meaning they have full control. As I do not store any user Health Data the app does have some limitations. The user must be signed into the same Apple ID account their Apple Health app is synced to, otherwise no workout data will be found. Any third party fitness tracking apps like Strava, Adidas run etc, must first be synced with Apple Health before Titan Challenges can read the data. 🐱 RevenueCat Implementing a subscription service in the app was something I was very nervous about. I had never don’t it before and thought it was going to be a massive headache. How do I handle renewals? How do I handle expired subs? Can I offer a free trial? All questions that were running through my head. I ended up attending an Apple Online seminar about subscription based apps to help extend my knowledge on the subject. I can’t remember where but I saw someone comment about a product called RevenueCat. I gave it a google and after some research I was excited at what I found. RevenueCat was a service that would handle all of your subscription transaction for you, as well as give you a dashboard where you could see number of subs, number of free trials active etc. I was sold. Again there was plenty of useful resources on YouTube on how to implement it, and within a couple of days I had to up and running. The cost of RevenueCat was also great. The service is free until you have a monthly income of $10,000 a month, which I knew would take me years to achieve (Or more likely would never reach). Continued in my next comment…

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3yr ago

Maker

Pt2. Continued…. 🍎 Apple, Google or Mapbox? Maps are a huge part of Titan Challenges. They’re used to show the users the challenge route, show users their current location along a route, show user a Street View photo of their virtual location and also used to show all of the challenges available on a large interactive globe. Originally I set out to use Google Maps only, as I knew I would need their Dynamic Map to show the user where they were along a route, as well as Street View to actually show the user their virtual location. Although the cost of Google Maps isn’t crazy expensive at the rate I would be using it, I decided that any static images of maps I would be showing, I would convert to using Apple Maps MapKit. The great advantage of this is that MapKit is completely free to use. Both could read the same GeoJson files I was using for challenge routes, so the implementation was very simple. When users first sign into the app they’re presented with an amazing 3D globe that shows little pins of all of the available challenges. This feature was actually a last moment addition I made to the app and I think is possibly the best thing I did. Mapbox allowed be to present the 3D globe and create my own custom pins to showcase each challenge. The user can pan and zoom around the globe and tap on the pins to see a challenge route. If the user doesn’t like the look of the challenge they can simply zoom out and carry on exploring. Originally the home screen of the app was just a main menu screen with three large buttons. Removing this and replacing it with the 3D map give the app a real unique feature that makes it stand out from its competitors. Mapbox only starts charging you after you have 25,000 unique monthly active user. I don’t think I will hit this number for a loooooong time or more likely never! So in the end I actually use three different map providers! 👶🏼 Becoming a Dad My goal was to try and get the app out by January 2023, with the idea that I would hit the fitness boom you normally get at the beginning of a new year. However, in January I became a Dad for the first time. And along with that my development time hit zero. I found it quite a stressful time, as the lack of sleep and the adjustment to a completely new way of life took its toll on me. In the back of my mind I knew I needed to get the app done and out the door. With some thanks to the in-laws helping looking after the baby I was able to slowly but surely finish the app off. I few features had to be cut, but I hope to bring them back in the future, as I gradually improve the app. 💰 Business Model In my previous apps I have always gone with non-consumable in app purchases, as explained earlier this is my first venture in subscriptions. As the app grows, so will it’s costs, so the need for a constant flow of income is important for the life cycle of the app. Deciding on a price structure for the app was honestly the hardest part. How much is too much? How low is too low? What will scare people off? Is it good value for money? All questions that needed to be answered. After some research I settled on a yearly subscription cost of £17.99 and a monthly option of £1.99. This subscriptions will give the user access to all of the challenges. The cost is half the price of the competitors that offer real medal challenges for £30 a pop, as well as under cutting some of the other virtual fitness apps. I think there is still some tweaking to be done with the price, but I think this is a good starting point. All users are also given a 2 week free trial on sign up, which is important as it allows users to experience the app first and see if they feel it is worth the commitment. 🚗 Road Map Below is a list of features I want to bring in the future. - AR experience where users can view their medals in a trophy cabinet or display case - Social features - More challenges (Obviously) - More variety of medals - Special/Limited events Anyway, that is me done. Sorry it was a bit of a wall of text. If you have any questions around the development of the app please feel free to ask.

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3yr ago

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