Preparation for Sprint 1

Guys, gals, and non-binary pals, the end of our first sprint is upon us! We're doing agile software development in a series of sprints. Each sprint seeks to create a functional product that can then be adapted and improved for later sprints. Right now we're looking at Wednesday, April 18 as the sprint 1 deadline. So what does this mean for Chinchilla Chat?

A cute furry friend to protect your identity and deliver your messages. (Now with an eye!)

What does this entail?

We here at Chinchilla Chat have never worked on Android apps prior to this term. Despite this, we have been working hard to figure out how this all works, and we hope to have a functioning chat app by the end of this sprint. We've designed most of our basic user interface and are working on making it even better with intuitive organization and some minor customization. We have had some trouble figuring out Firebase (which we will be using for the server side of our app), but we're figuring it out. We'll make our best effort to have a simple working product to present on Wednesday!

Some particular features we consider necessary for sprint 1:

• Cute logo
• Intuitive user interface
• Easy and fully functional login, logout, and sign up options (Note, signing up will be restricted to students with @augustana.edu email addresses.)
• Functionality for two-person conversations

(Note this is not necessarily a comprehensive list.)

Side-by-side Day and Night Mode shown on our login screen.

What doesn't this entail?

Our sprint 1 goals do not include the anonymity or search features that will really make our app stand out. Right now we're just trying to make a simple general chat app that works well so that after this sprint we can use the next 3 weeks to really customize that basic template to our specific purpose - allowing for anonymous communication between LGBTQ+ students at Augustana College. We have an assortment of features we're interested in implementing in our final product, and time will be the greatest factor in what we manage to accomplish.

Some particular features we consider necessary for the final product:

• Anonymity mode in conversations (enabled by default)
• Search for friends to chat with
• Functionality for blocking other users

(Note this is not necessarily a comprehensive list.)

We're super excited to show off our app as development continues!