Chat Capsule

What is Chat Capsule?

Chat Capsule is a messaging app that lets you stay in touch with friends and family, send messages at scheduled times, and keep a personal diary. It's designed to be simple and easy to use, requiring only a phone number to sign up. With Chat Capsule, you can see which of your contacts are also using the app, making it easy to connect with others. The app is still in its early stages but has exciting plans for future updates.

Benefits

Chat Capsule offers several key benefits:

• Easy to Use: Sign up with just your phone number and start messaging right away.
• Scheduled Messages: Plan your messages ahead of time and send them at the perfect moment.
• Personal Diary: Keep a private diary to jot down your thoughts and memories.
• See Who's Using It: Check which of your contacts are on Chat Capsule to connect easily.

Use Cases

Chat Capsule is perfect for:

• Staying in Touch: Keep in touch with friends and family with simple, scheduled messages.
• Personal Journaling: Use the diary feature to record your thoughts and experiences.
• Group Chats: Connect with multiple contacts at once for group conversations.

Additional Information

Chat Capsule was built using modern tools and frameworks to ensure a smooth and efficient development process. The app was developed with Flutter, which allows for the creation of native-feel apps for both Android and iOS. Firebase was used for the backend, providing easy integration with Flutter and a range of free features, including Firebase Authentication for phone SMS-based authentication. Firestore, a NoSQL cloud database, was chosen to avoid the complexities of traditional web app architectures, allowing for direct data manipulation from clients with security rules in place. The app also utilizes Cloudinary for image media management, with features like on-upload and ad-hoc transformations.

The design process for Chat Capsule was conducted using Figma, which was preferred over Adobe XD for its superior capabilities. The restrictive nature of mobile app design standards made the process more straightforward, with the use of Google's Material UI design system and Apple's Cupertino design system ensuring a consistent and user-friendly interface. The development process took approximately four months as a side project, with about 12 hours of work per week, equating to around five weeks of full-time work. Tools like Atlassian's Jira and Confluence were used for project management, and the code was hosted on GitHub. Flutter's integration with VS Code and its hot reloading feature made the development process efficient and enjoyable.

To release the app, marketing visuals were created for the app stores, and a simple landing website was developed using Gatsby. The landing page includes visuals, links to the apps, terms and conditions, and promises for future features. The app was published on both the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store, with the latter requiring a more thorough review process and stricter policies. The development and release of Chat Capsule demonstrate the effectiveness of using modern tools and frameworks for building an MVP, with the potential for future growth and feature additions based on user demand.