Hourglass

Hourglass is an iOS application for helping students and staff in educational institutions access their academic libraries' reading resources online, plan and manage their reading schedules all in one place using an integrated to-do list.

For a quick insight of this project, check out this small video: https://youtu.be/03kkpIeKz5g

Table of Contents

• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
• Introduction
• Features
  1. To-do List
  2. "Read" Tab
  3. Timer
  4. Login System
• Built With

Getting Started

In order to give you a headstart about how the project looks like, we have added a file called "Hourglass Description Video.mp4" in this repository. Please make sure to check it out in order to have a quick insight of Hourglass. The "Hello, Hourglass!.mp4" video file is a sneak peak video of the app functions and interface.

Prerequisites

In order to run this app, you will need to have Xcode installed on your Mac and you can test run the app in your iOS device via Xcode.

NOTE: Please feel free to reach out to ivedantshrivastava@gmail.com with any doubts or suggestions regarding this repository and the Hourglass project.

Introduction

Hourglass is an iOS application made majorly using Swift. Our purpose of making Hourglass was to make an application that helps students and staff within educational institutions manage their time better when it comes to academic reading and other related tasks, get a better insight of their time utilized for such activities, plan their schedules better while making sure to provide them a simpler and more user friendly interface than majority of the productivity applications out there.

Features

Hourglass has three main features:

1. To-do list for all kinds of academic, co-curricular, or extra-curricular activities
2. Reading tab for searching, gathering, and saving all your reading resources through the app directly without switching between the app and a web browser
3. Timer to record the total reading time taken by the user for each reading resource

1. To-do List

The To-do List in Hourglass is more user-friendly and functional than majority of the other apps of similar category in the App Store. It has 5 major differences than its competition which are as follows:

1. Categorize Lists by Color - The user can add multiple lists of tasks inside the To-do list which are then color coded into various categories. For example, the user can assign red color to tasks such as Homework that require immediate action and yellow color to tasks that can be flexibly scheduled.

2. Sort Lists by Time - The user can sort these lists as per their specific time priorities. For example, if the list of Algorithms class homework needs more attention than the Structured Programming homework list, the user can simply drag these lists from their placeholders and set them as per their priority order.
3. Priority Coloring - Within all the lists, the tasks that have higher priority get a darker color shade within the list so to signify the user of the level of priority and immediate action that they require.

4. Search Bar - The Search Bar in the To-do List can be used to quickly find any list or any task saved within the app.
5. Reminders - Users can set reminders for each and every task within the to-do list so that they can get the app notifications accordingly.

2. "Read" Tab

The "Read" Tab is a dedicated tab for searching, gathering, and storing all the reading resources of the users through the app directly without having to switch to a web browser back and forth. It also helps manage or dedicate reading time to each and every individual reading resource. Besides this, it also lets the user know whether a particular reading resource is available online on Google Scholar or at GW Libraries (George Washington University Library Collection).

3. Timer

It works in coherence with the "Read" Tab in order to record the total reading time taken by the user to finish reading a particular resource on the app. It is also designed to give a detailed analysis of work time so that the user can get a better insight of their schedules and plan better ahead.

4. Login System

The Login System of Hourglass works with Apple's Face ID and Touch ID features. This enables the users for quick log in into the app. We register our users and maintain their login credentials database using Google Firebase.

Built With

Hourglass has been built with the following tools:

1. Xcode IDE - Base Coding Platform
2. Swift Programming Language
3. Ruby - For Cocoapods
4. Google Firebase - For managing the Hourglass user database
5. Realm - For To-do List Database with local persistant storage so that the users can access their to-do lists at all times without worrying about being online to access them.
6. Sketch - For App Design Layout.

Authors

• Vedant Shrivastava (GitHub: https://github.com/ivedants ; Email: ivedantshrivastava@gmail.com)
• Limin Wu (GitHub: https://github.com/limin2016 ; Email: 1466299085@qq.com)
• Jin Yu (GitHub: https://github.com/JinYu0810 ; Email: yujin0810@outlook.com)
• Junyun Zhao (GitHub: https://github.com/G39680437 ; Email: zhaojunyun@gwu.edu)