Three Oxford students have come up with new smartphone apps, and both are intended to fit with the Oxford student lifestyle. One such app is buddhify, a meditation app designed by 2003 Univ Chemistry graduate Rohan Gunatillake. Mr Gunatillake describes his app as “the world’s first mass market modern meditation mobile app”, “designed for busy people’.
Mr Gunatillake first became interested in meditation at the same time he started a stressful City job in management consultancy. He began to attend meditation retreats and then to write a meditation blog.
Mr Gunatillake created the app in reaction to many people who he had met who were reluctant to meditate because they didn’t have the time for a class or course, or they found meditation “too hippy, too New Age”. He stresses the modern and “playful” focus of the app, and hired a visual design company to create a “fun and intuitive” feel for it. He seeks to adapt “traditional meditation techniques for contemporary urban life.’
Mr Gunatillake and his team ran a successful crowd-funding campaign to raise funds for the project. However, his involvement was not just in the business side- he designed the meditations himself, and is the male voice on the app.
The user selects one of four possible urban locations (such as at home or travelling), one of four styles, or ‘flavours’, of meditation and one of two sizes. The app plays an audio-guided meditation based on this selection. There is also a self-assessment option, a choice between male and female voices, and a “Two Player Meditation” mode.
Ryan Dunwoody and Shiv Pabari, both second years at St Anne’s, have created The Oxford Bubble, an app showing offers and discounts in Oxford. The app features a special deal every week and a term-long deal aimed at Oxford students.
The app is on the Apple and Android, and there are plans to release it on Blackberry “within the next month or so”. There is also a mobile website for smartphones and an online website that can be used by anybody with internet.
Mr Dunwoody says they had the idea based on the “huge voucher and discount culture” created by companies such as groupon and vouchercloud. Â He and Mr Pabari thought an app dealing with students in just one city would be a lot more relevant and popular, and they state that “there’s not a more perfect place than Oxford to start this in.”
Mr Pabari has had experience in business through the Young Enterprise scheme and Oxford Entrepreneurs, and Mr Dunwoody also has some business experience and has created websites before, mostly for family members but also including a “YouTube type site” for talent videos.
They claim that the most difficult task was getting meetings with the businesses who have offer the website’s discounts, as neither of them had a track record in business start-ups. They have been working on the app for the last six months and released it for the start of term.
Mr Dunwoody asserts the “reception has gone very well”- the app has had 4000 page views on its website and close to 500 downloads. He expects these figures to increase significantly within the next week, due to substantial marketing.
Bhuddify will be available for £1.99 on Android and iPhone on November 3rd. The Oxford Bubble is free and already released.
