iOS Hackathon

I competed in an Apple sponsored hackathon during my graduate study at Rochester Institute of Technology to create an app related to media in less than a week. I had designed the interface, app icon, and prepared our presentation before the judges.

What kind of cool iPad app can be created in less than a week?

My group consisted of several on campus a cappella singers (myself included). The team and I attempted to make an app in a domain we were familiar with: music. Within a couple of hours I had my whiteboard filled with some ideas of what kinds of apps we could take on with us unanimously choosing to go with an audio looping application. After downloading and using a few different popular audio looping apps, the idea had been solidified. We wanted to take on audio looping for performers who would be using this app live on stage.

I did tons of sketching and working with my team to offer something unique compared to other App Store offerings. I looked to inspiration from several physical, live audio devices: live looping pedals, drum kit machines, dj turntables, reel to reel recorders, etc. Given the time constraints I figured it would be best to go with creating a visual metaphor of audio equipment that was not fully skeuomorphic but respected its digital environment.

We had pivoted ideas a few times as we had found different software API’s that weren’t performing to the needs of real-time audio manipulation. My early ideas had most of the buttons situated as if the iPad app would be set down. The more I thought about this being for live use, I decided to place the buttons along the sides so the iPad could be held and used to record, similar to using an instrument. To accommodate the controls my teammates were able to produce, I had created on/off toggles for each multitrack, record functionality within each track, reset all, and “master” volume with playback pause/play.

Results

Although we did not win, several of my group members returned to Apple as full time employees.