Dream To App: A Journey to the Android Market

Turns out version 1.0 of DailyDistance contained an annoying bug. The  app would sometimes randomly force-close on start-up.  This error didn’t show up in testing and the first active users never experienced. The problem? DailyDistance uses a custom title bar that was not being initialized correctly.  Hopefully the 1.1 release will squish this annoying random bug.

Daily Distance an app that allowed me to combine two personal passions (running and programming) and provide something of value to a community I care about.

In it’s initial version, Daily Distance does one thing only: it lets you log your workout info right from you Android device while using a friendly Android-native interface.

In designing DailyDistance, I looked at the other similar apps for the Android platform (of which there is exactly one currently).  More specifically, I looked at the reviews for this app.  I wanted to know address the “pain points” users had with it.  Here are the ones I took on in the first round:

-Logging of incomplete work-outs. While Daily Distance will let  you post a note without requiring any time or workout information, it will at least warn you that you did so.

-Accidental double-post. That’s just plain annoying. This is prevented in two ways:

1) When you submit your workout, the save button is instantly disabled until the post is completed.

2) Once your data has been posted, you are re-directed to your Dailymile profile page and can see the workout you just posted.

This initial release is designed to test the waters and see how many people are interested in using Dailymile from an Android device with the pain points of the competitive app removed. If the interest is high, I’ll begin adding features. I’d love to your feedback and welcome both bug reports and feature requests. Just leave a comment below.