TouchTheBed

Author: Helen Dun

Descripition

This is a Swift application built for MacOS for the purpose of annoying the user into going to bed. I created this for a research project for my CSC 485C course, "Computing for Cognitive Augmentation", at the University of Victoria. The PDF file "Augmenting Devices to be Less Addictive" is my powerpoint for the presentation I did in class, which was acclaimed the most entertaining presentation for the day I presented.

The TouchTheBed application primarily uses the menu bar (the far-right side of the top bar of a MacOS desktop) and pop-ups. The pop-over of the menu bar allows users to set their bedtime hours in military time. The icon in the upper-riight of the pop-over also tells the user whether the application thinks it is currently bedtime or not, with a moon indicating it is bedtime and a sun indicating it is not.

The pop-up gives a random, inspirational quote, the current time and how many times the pop-up has popped up since the application was opened. While open, the pop-up also plays a loud foghorn sound on repeat, which I find is the most annoying and a bit jumpscarey- this application may not be for the faint of heart. During bedtime, the pop-up occurs at the start of bedtime and once every 10 minutes from then until daytime.

Credit

Code

Some of the code for the BedtimeTimer, Viewcontroller and AppDelegate files is taken from and/or inspired by the following tutorials:

• How To Make A macOS Menu Bar App by Charlie Levine at https://medium.com/macoclock/how-to-make-a-macos-menu-bar-app-bfdbbcd76077
• MacOS Development from Beginners by Roberto Machorro and Sarah Reichelt at https://www.raywenderlich.com/731-macos-development-for-beginners-part-1

Art & Sounds

• App Icon from pixabay
• Sun Icon by Laxy at https://pngtree.com/freepng/sun-png-clipart-colored_5656301.html
• Moon Icon by Shihab Shahrirar at https://pngtree.com/freepng/white-moon-with-star-in-the-night_6635448.html
• Foghorn Noise by user "kwahmah_02" of freesound.org