What's the cost?

I believe that it's really important for this app to be free.
I could've ordered in a button and wired it up to the phone, but using the headphone buttons means that the app is freely available to anyone.
This means that the data will reflect opinions and input from a variety of people, not just a select group who could be bothered to order a button.

This app is designed to change people's everyday lives for the better. Not just for stress reduction, but for safety too. I think that if the app is free and easy to use then more people use it, and the more people use it, the better the data will be and more useful it will be to users in turn.

Edit Journey

So the "edit journey" function is used through the journey results screen.

 The app could allow the user to browse through their journey's "stress points", showing the "Google Earth" image of where they pressed the button as a reminder.

 They have the choice to say what the problem was, e.g. busy junctions, pot holes, traffic hot spot, lots of trucks and buses, narrow busy roads, etc.

If the "stress points" are categorised right, then this could be useful in 2 ways:
1. Users planning a journey can tell the difference between a pot hole and busy traffic when choosing whether to avoid that "stress point"
2. A list of all problem pot holes can be pulled up as a campaign against local councils to fix roads.

Thought:
It would be good to tell the difference between time sensitive problems like road works and consistent problems. This way, users could be asked if there was still a problem at a certain point.


Also, although there isn't need for much detail, users could have the option to write more about the "stress point". This could be useful when a problem is in the inside lane of a junction as it could be irrelevant to cyclists taking different turnings. or example,  if a pothole is only on a specific part of the road,e.g. bus lane, it doesn't have to affect the whole road, just raise awareness that there is a nasty one on the route in the bus lane to watch out for of.

Plan Journey

Before leaving for work, or if you just need directions to somewhere new, quickly type in where you are and where you're headed...

... and choose your route.

There are 3 choices:

Quietest: Avoids all major roads, longer route

Happiest: Chooses a direct route that avoids most major "stress points" from users data

Quickest: Takes the most direct route

The idea is that the more users of the app, the more data collated. From this data, patterns can be seen of consistent "stress points" and journeys can be chosen avoiding them. This means that the data will apply for most cyclists, avoiding re-routing because of a nervous cyclists' "stress points" which are irrelevant for more confident cyclists.

Idea:
It would be good if I could find a way of categorising stress points, like asking before tracking if the cyclist is a nervous/confident cyclist and record data according to this.
Then maybe when a journey is searched, this question can be asked again to only show relevant "stress points".

Developments

Although the actual app is limited in what you can do, I have had some ideas of the possibilities it could take.

Two new features have been added:

Plan Journey - to choose a better route

Edit Journey- Within "My Journeys", a chance to record what the problem was

Concept Video

#cyclesafe

The Times "Cities fit for cycling" campaign that has been running from the beginning of February, sparked by the unfortunate incident where a lady was knocked off her bicycle next to the Times offices in Wapping. They have since got celebrity and politician backing, creating a manefesto for safer cycling.

A Ghost Bike left for Min Joo Lee in the middle of Kings Cross gyratory

Mikael Buck for The Times

Just a few clicks on google show up so many stories of cyclists killed on the roads in the past few years. 

There's so many dangerous roads that just aren't reported, or not discovered expect by cyclists.

I hope that happy cycle could be used as a method for collecting data, not just about stressful routes, but dangerous ones too. Perhaps local councils could use this data to keep tracks of what routes need repairs and alterations.

Video making

So taking the actual video was a bigger struggle than I thought. It was tricky to get shots of "stress points" without putting myself in a dangerous position, as well as the practicalities of trying to attach a camera to myself and keep it there while cycling (nearly went really badly).

It was too tricky and risky to film the app in use as in touching the screen for tracking, so I'm going to record it as if the button function works. I think this is a fair representation of the app because using the button was the initial idea and how it would work best, it just hasn't been possible so far to figure out the coding to make it actually work.
Also... explaining how to use the app screen as a tracker makes it a lot more complicated than needed... like the screen shots would have to be edited to make a clear space for tapping and then there's the complication of how to attach the phone safely to the handlebars for use. I think using the phone is a lot more dangerous than using the button as it would probably need more attention and hand fully off handlebars to use. This isn't what I want to advertise, as I think it would make the journey more dangerous and stressful, rather than the main aim of making journeys happier and safer.
Explaining this would be quite long winded and take away from the usefulness of the app because of the intial big flaws of using the phone.

So anyway... I'm taking the video of pretty much how it works now, but using button instead. I think I will leave further ideas out for now to separate the difference between what it can do and what it could do.