Background

The year is 2022, finally in my final year at the University of Malawi. I could now register for one of the courses I was always looking forward to. COM411 - Mobile Application Development. As a requirement (or routine) each one of us will have to develop a mini-project by applying everything that they will learn in the course. To be honest, I was both excited and nervous. Excited because it was something I was looking forward to, nervous because I did not want to mess up both my grades and the app.

Before all that, I only had a narrow background in mobile development with React Native. React Native was not allowed to be used nor was Flutter at first. So, what did I do? I had two options left. Java or Kotlin. I had heard a lot about Kotlin and the fact that Google considers it as the recommended language for Mobile Development, I had no other choice. No, Java was really not an option for me. I don't hate Java but I love making fun of it though.

To be honest, I loved everything about that Mobile Development course. It truly represented the whole software development in a nutshell pretty well. From ideation, sketches, Figma prototypes, and then finally the MVP.

Coming from a Declarative Web Development background, native development (with the Activities and Views approach) felt so foreign to me, and Jetpack Compose was still in beta then. I was lost and felt the poor grade coming my way. But it was not about the grade, it was about the mobile development process itself.

Like most of my classmates, I resorted to just building the UI first and then writing all the logic later. BIG Mistake. Unlike web development, this approach gets messy quickly.

Initial Idea

By the time we were going for our mid-semester break, my idea was fleshed out and the name Relate was born. Relate was going to be an app for introverts. People who, like me, don't want to be seen on the internet but freely express themselves. It worked. Or so I thought.

The Second Idea

The second idea behind Relate was built on top of the privacy and anonymous nature of the first idea only that this time, I wanted it to be a platform for people who are facing some kind of struggle. Depression or something and then, other users could offer advice and the like.

Final and Official Idea

The Others

I was now in my final semester of both fourth year and school in general which meant we now had to come up with our final ICT Project. I was not ready for this but I had no other choice but to go over it. Unlike the Mobile App Development mini-project, we were put in groups. Luckily, I was grouped with Elizabeth Kapusa, someone I had worked on a previous mini-project with in our third year, and Emmanuel 'Legend' William a friend since my first year. The other group members were Fred Likaka and Comfort Chikapa.

The Next Ideation

Having sat down with the team and sharing about the app ideas we had worked on prior, Eliza's idea was similar to mine. The difference was that her idea focused on women going through Postnatal Depression by a vote of hands we then merged my Relate idea with hers and then added Addiction to the mix.

The core features of Relate were centered on sharing issues, relating to them, and motivating/encouraging each other. It was to become a safe space for anyone and everyone.

With suicide cases being on concerning rise at the time, we believed that Relate would have helped to prevent some of them from occuring if it had been created prior.

The Aftermath of the Final Project Presentation

Well, all I can say is currently, Relate has 1 active developer. Myself. Emmanuel 'Legend' William will come in to help anytime he pleases. No one cared more about the app than me and if I don't work on it, no one will.