Elevator Pitch
Watergeddon is an in your face, albeit – impossible, representation of a water storage doomsday countdown.
Concept
Watergeddon was the 2nd app built for the App My State competition and was designed to shock but educate. It’s a submission to the sustainability category – a category I thought would have the least competition and therefore the highest likelihood of a favorable outcome.
It’s a big, in your face counter, one which you have the ability to influence – interactive and fun with a dash of seriousness. A bit like me…
The app also contains a per postcode representation of water usage, because I love visualizing data. A graph showcasing common water usage in the home – did you know that a full load of washing uses up 140 litres of water? And finally, links to several water saving government web resources.
Research
Normally I’d discuss the research conducted about the competition, monetization research, etc in this section, however, this app didn’t need any of that. It was a simple data calculation and interaction app.
A little research was conducted when calculating the theoretical watergeddon. I researched all water catchments in Victoria and found their respective volumes – I then divided the total volume by total population * litres of water usage per person per day.
Outcome
I seriously thought, as simple as this app was, that it may have been in the running. It may have been, but it didn’t win. I was/am still quite happy with the outcome – it’s fast, it works, it’s informative and visually appealing.
Monetization
No way.
Lessons
There were two lessons I learnt while building this app:
1. That I definitely need to brush up on my Javascript. If it wasn’t for Ray Hilton and his Javascript ninja skills, I wouldn’t have finished this app.
2. Being part of a small group of apps submitted, I thought the app would stand out, get noticed and get attention. I was probably right – but the winner stood out just as much. Unfortunately there are no prizes for second.
For me, the lesson formula is: lots of competition = harder to stand out. less competition = easier to stand out – but there are never any guarantees. A formula for common sense more than anything.
Again?
Definitely, although if I was to do it again, I would write the app using HTML5 (actually using HTML5 elements) and CSS3.
You can check out watergeddon at – http://watergeddon.greenlemon.com.au