DrinkChecker – Alcohol Tracker - Interview with the developer of a fantastic app

Did you have any prior development or coding experience?

Yes, I work as a software engineer. I have already worked on various projects.

What was the most challenging aspect of developing mobile app?

Calculating the current alcohol level was the most difficult aspect. This value cannot be calculated from now into the past, but must be calculated from the past. Then there is the absorption delay, which adds an additional time factor. I spent some time on this task.

_{Tobias Herrmann}

My name is Tobias Herrmann and I was born and raised in Switzerland. At the moment, I am almost 30 years old and live in a small town in the north of Switzerland. After an apprenticeship as a computer scientist, I started to study besides my work. I am currently writing my bachelor thesis on fully homomorphic encryption and quantum computing and work in a small company as a full stack developer.

Name a few of your favorite apps and reason you love them.

WhatsApp is probably the app I use the most, because this is the communication app that everyone in Switzerland uses. I am also interested in news from science, here Curiosity presents five topics every day. I also like listening to music on the road, where Spotify comes into play.

How long have you been working on this app?

Maybe six months or so. It was a hobby project that I developed in my spare time. All in all I have invested about 100 hours, but I'm not sure anymore, I've never tracked it.

What need of the user did you have in mind when developing this app?

I actually created the app for myself to check how high my alcohol consumption is. Then I thought, hey...maybe somebody else could use this!

In what way do you think your app is better than similar apps on the market? Please describe in detail what innovation you think you bring and what you are proud of in your app.

There are already several apps for this purpose. I've tried a few too. But some of them crashed because they were simply badly programmed or have not been updated for some time. Also the UI didn't excite me anywhere: they all seemed rather old-fashioned. I also wanted the function of a absorption delay - which is more accurate - because the drunk alcohol does not immediately end up in the blood.

What are your future plans and expected features of the coming new versions of this app?

I plan to add the blood alcohol limit for driving to the app. It should also be possible to adjust the degradation rate of alcohol in different stages (low, normal, high), depending on how good the body's metabolism is. Aside from that, I look at what kind of user feedback is being received and let myself be influenced by it.

Assuming new users of your app are reading this page. What do you want to ask them to do (contact you about X, Share the app, etc.)?

If anyone has any problems or ideas, don't hesitate to contact me at [email protected].