InspirationWhat inspired us: As three Berea College Students at three different stages of our Berea journey, we found that we had all faced the same struggle, one that seems to be handed down class after class. Balancing academic workload with seeking social support and building community. We needed an app that made us all feel like stars by tracking our study progress for each class. This shows us visibly how much effort we are putting into our education and any classes we may be giving less attention. It helps us stay motivated by giving daily motivational quotes because let us all be honest, being a Berea College student is exhausting, and we tend to feel like we are not doing enough.

We have all also had times when we needed help from peers but did not know how to ask or reach out to people. Community is the heart of Berea College, and we refuse to let it fade away. The open forum requests and star system helps to facilitate this.

What you learned: The most significant thing we learnt today was persistence and determination. We learnt the value of teamwork because none of us could have done this alone. Neither of us had ever build an application like this and this taught us to take on challenges in web development, we learnt to debug and refine our project intentionally. Being the brain behind any artificial intelligence tool utilized was also something we aquired from this project. We learnt quite a lot about how data bases work and building platforms with multiple users. The intentional planning and vision behind the code is just as essential as the application itself.

How you built your project: First we took about two hours to brainstorm and then created a flow chart for the application by hand on the white board. This preliminary phase was essential in capturing our vision, keeping us on track, accountable and motivated.

Secondly, we created a detailed PRD (Products Requirement Document). This was a detailed description of core features and user workflow. We also noted the problem we are trying to solve, how our app solves it and possible edge cases and technical details such as the Supabase databases used for the backend storage. We integrated the leadership board tab using a star system that rewards helpful community member with stars based on their replies. Thirdly, we uploaded this PRD into V0 and this helped to create a base frontend. We created databases using Supabase and this was used to store user data outside of local storage. We debugged multiple times across three computers to ensure user detail storage and authentication. We split up to figure out the backend development on two different devices that took two diferent approaches. Finaly, we deployed with Vercel, tested and continually finetuned across three computers and two phones.