DripDrip
An irreverant social hydration tracker and reminder
This is DripDrip! DripDrip is an app that helps people stay hydrated by creating a gamified social framework where friends can remind each other to drink water, and form teams to build new habits together.
The App
There are hundreds of hydration reminder apps on the App Store. Unlike the majority of those apps, DripDrip relies on its user community to send reminders instead timers. In DripDrip, users send random funny reminders to drink water to each other. Those messages are presented to the recipient in the form of push notifications, and chat messages in the app. The app calculates a healthy target water volume that users should drink daily, based on their weight. When users receive a reminder message, they are prompted to drink some water, and log how much water they drank in the app. Users who complete complete their target water goal add to their personal DripDrip score, and contribute to their groups scores as well.
Along with keeping a personal score, DripDrip Groups are another great way for users to stay motivated in maintaining their healthy habit. Groups are like those running groups that people join to train for 10k's and half marathons. Friends can form a group, and work together to earn a group score. Group score is the average of its members DripDrip scores. Group members can keep track of which members have and have not completed their goal for the day. Similar to running groups, DripDrip groups help members stay committed, and provide a stronger community that motivates each other.
Check out the app on the App Store →
The Tech
DripDrip is an MVVM structured app written in Swift. DripDrip uses a Firebase backend, with cloud functions written in Typescript. The original app was ideated and prototyped by David Ho and Justin Rodriguez, and the latest version of the app was written and released by Justin Rodriguez. The app is fully opensource. It is encouraged that young iOS developers utilize DripDrip's source code to make their own creations. As a young iOS developer myself, I learned many useful skills in app development while writing DripDrip. Currently, I am helping a younger computer science student create their own app with DripDrip's sourcecode as a starting point. This process will later be documented as a step by step guide for other young developers to follow.
The Business
My hope for DripDrip, along with helping people have a laugh and create healthy habits, is for it to be a cash-flow-positive business. DripDrip has over 200 users, and as the user base grows, I believe that some water, and water bottle companies might be interested in advertising to a bunch of motivated water drinkers. Advertisments would not detract from the user experience as they would be presented as one of the random reminder messages that users send to each other. Messages like "Drink _____ water. It's better" and "Bro I think you need a ____ water bottle" along with a purchase link, could help create brand awareness and drive sales.
I purposely designed my database to be as lean as possible in order to minimize my server and database costs. Currently, my personal Venmo account is in the app, and DripDrip is fully supported by donations. Even small donations help me accomodate hundreds more users on the app.