For those captivated by social media, a new app for rapid photo and video communication has been created, called Chatwalk.
Co-created by Mehdi Jourabbaf, a fourth-year political science student, Adnan Patel and Mahmoud Hosseini, both recent graduates from the University of Ottawa, Chatwalk is described as a one-take video and photo walkie-talkie with the aim to be the fastest method to capture and send videos and pictures.
Once the user records a video or takes a picture, the captured moment is instantly sent to the recipient, cropping out the ability for users to confirm or modify the image or video in any way.
“We have an automated sending process and we want to let users share a moment with another person faster than saying, ‘hi,’ and at the same time make it genuine,” Jourabbaf said. “The world is information rich yet time poor, and with that we believe it’s not only important to communicate visually but it’s also important to streamline the sending process to make videos genuine and fast with the busy lives people live.”
For the app creators, the process of formation started with an idea and mockups to visualize and communicate how the app would actually work. Often, the mockups remained as they were and never needed more work.
If the team collectively agreed on the idea, they would then start programming its front end on iOS, the Apple iPhone operating system, to make the screens look like the mockups the team designed earlier.
The team then started building a database to collect and store incoming and outgoing data. Thorough testing of the application is done to verify the app is stable and bug free.
Finally, once happy with the final product, the team submitted the application to Apple’s App Store.
Currently, Chatwalk is free for iPhone users and the team is in the process of bringing the app to the Android platform. Plans are also in the works to improve app stability and roll out new features in March.
The app creators said they’re thrilled to see the level of participation from users in their latest addition, which has been much higher than their previous app, Notewalk.
“We’ve been amazed with the level of engagement from our users so far. This level of engagement is something we didn’t even nearly achieve with Notewalk and it’s both exciting and surprising,” Jourabbaf said.
