From Journals to Code: The Journey Behind Luna Focus
During the 2020 pandemic, software engineer Hannah Pate began a journey of self-discovery and self-reflection. The journal entries she had amassed over the years motivated her to organize her thoughts into the different aspects of her life: self, wealth, communication, home, fun, wellness, relationships, transformations, exploration, work, community, and healing. Using these twelve categories, Hannah linked each life area to a zodiac constellation and self-reflected on whichever one was behind the moon. Since the moon cycles over all the zodiac constellations in a month, spending 2-3 days in each, she had created a monthly check-in system for all twelve areas of her life.
A couple short months after joining 7Factor’s team of engineers in August of 2021, Hannah had the idea of turning this system she had set up for herself into an application that could be used by other people so that they could have some form of guidance along the same path that she had taken. In October of 2021, she started working on the project in her free time. During those first couple months at 7Factor, she had been learning how to use the Flutter framework and found it to be an immensely helpful building block for the multi-platform dream that she had for this project.
By the end of that year, Hannah had deployed the Luna Focus website and used the same codebase to quickly advance the development of the Luna Focus mobile app. Her job at 7Factor introduced her to the Flutter framework, which she utilized for Luna Focus. The experience was invaluable, allowing her to apply the knowledge gained from Luna Focus to her work at 7Factor, and vice versa.
The biggest challenge that Hannah said she faced throughout the project was troubleshooting. As she introduced more and more features to the app the more complex it became, and troubleshooting was more challenging since she didn’t have a team to split up the issues or figure them out together.
By April of 2022, Luna Focus had reached the minimum viable product (MVP) phase and was released onto the App Store and Google Play shortly after. While getting to that stage, Hannah also worked on setting up the business side of the project, such as forming the LLC, getting a registered agent, setting up the business bank account, and more. The current version of Luna Focus lets users journal, helps them set up vision boards, and keeps track of their progress along with the phases of the moon. Hannah’s next big goal for Luna Focus is to make the user experience more streamlined and to help people kick-start their morning and evening routines with the moon.
7Factor is dedicated to cultivating an inclusive culture that empowers women in STEM. Hannah provides three valuable insights for women facing challenges in tech:
- Reframe how you perceive software engineering
Prior to pursuing software engineering, Hannah considered herself more of an artist. Throughout her career, she has treated programming as another tool to create with. - Alter your environment to be more comfortable
If you feel that there is an imbalance in the number of women you’re working with for example, she suggests finding groups of women to hang out with outside of work. “The idea is not to ignore the problem, the idea is to make you feel more comfortable and balanced as you face it.” - If you’re struggling with imposter syndrome: start your own project
Building Luna Focus helped Hannah get past imposter syndrome as a software engineer because she had built up physical evidence proving to herself that she was capable of developing a mobile app from ideation to production on her own.
If you want to try the Luna Focus experience for yourself, get two free months of the premium service by using the code: LUNAX7FACTOR. You can learn how to apply your promo code at https://lunafocus.com/blogs/news/how-to-apply-your-promo-code