Soundboard

SoundBoard is an app designed for sound designers and audio enthusiasts alike. The app is available for download as an Android .apk.

Overview

Soundboard is an android app developed in Kotlin with a Firebase database. The app created as a part of Dartmouth's Smartphone/Android Programming Course (CS 165). Over 3 weeks, I worked on the app's UI/UX and implemented most of the app's visual frontend. I also created all of the graphic design and illustration works associated with the project. You can download the app .apk and read more about the development details here.

The Problem

Designers who work with visual mediums (e.g. UX, graphic, illustration) have access to a multitude of platforms and social media through which they can find inspiration and references for their work. Sites such as Pinterest and Dribbble allow visual designers to sort through a user-generated database of content to help inform their own work. My team noticed a gap in the market for such a service for sound designers who frequently need to access large databases of soundbites to sample.

For this 3-week development sprint, my team's solution was SoundBoard. At a high level, Soundboard would allow users to discover soundbites uplodated by other users and curate their own soundboards.

Soundbyte

At soundboard, we call each post a soundbyte in order to combine the typical musical nature of soundbites with the more technical nature of sound design and sound engineering. And with that out of the way, a feature overview:

Features

Home/Dashboard Page

View a feed of soundbytes created by other users

Discover Page Page

Search for soundbytes created by other users by title, tag, or author

Post a Soundbyte

Users can upload their own soundbytes to share with others

Profile Page

Displays user-curated soundboards. User credentials are connected to a settings page

How it works

MVVM Diagram

Threaded Design Diagram

Outside Libraries

We also used various outside libraries and integrations, including:

• Firebase
• Audio Visualizer
• Media Player
• Tags
• Picasso

UI/UX design

Over 3 weeks where the vast majority of time needed to be devoted to the app's development, we had very little time to devote to polishing the design and dive into the design process. Even so, I did spend some time creating wireframes and iterating on the app's visual design:

Final Product

Watch a demo of the final product below or download the .apk for Android devices here.

Challenges & Takeaways

In creating this project, we learned how to:

• Create custom UI components
• Use Firebase Cloud & Database
• Implement user authentication
• Search and implement Tags
• Use Recyclerview
• Stream Audio & Image Media from Firebase
• Implement Outside Libraries
• Teamwork, Git, SE workflow

Features we wanted to implement, but had technical difficulties/ran out of time:

• Following other users
• Upload profile image
• Advanced filtering
• Setting the board image

Other challenges:

• Managing async calls
• Big Data Management
• Connecting Firebase Storage, Auth, and Realtime Database together
• Firebase daily storage quota limitation