Bubu-Dins

Bubu is a financial education game for middle school to college students, covering saving, budgeting, and credit through interactive lessons and real-life scenarios with Bubu, your learning buddy.

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Bubu-Dins

Before the lease, the loan, or the first paycheck, try the decision while it still costs thinking, not rent.

Inspiration

Most people learn about money the expensive way: a lease they barely understood, a card that felt free until it wasn't, a loan payment that arrived before the paycheck felt real. We wanted a rehearsal first. Walk into a world, try the choice, then say why. Not a chatbot that picks a product for you.

What it does

Bubu is a PathMX learning game. You sign in, keep your own progress, and move through a map.

  • Learn → Try it → Review on housing, investing, and a personal-finance portfolio.
  • Walk Storyworld, step into the Bank, and talk with Tram, a fictional banker who asks about tradeoffs instead of selling an account.
  • Open a dashboard fed by Capital One’s Nessie teaching sandbox (read-only). Practice numbers never write to a real bank.
  • Ask Dr.Bos for office-hours help by using Gemini API. Chat cannot grade you or award credit. Only you and the app save completion.

How we built it

Lessons and character voices live in paths/ as ordinary Markdown. A TypeScript plugin adds the map, portfolio board, dashboard, bank scene, Nessie route, and tutors. Dr.Bos and Tram run server-side with keys in .env, never in the browser. Nessie is GET-only. Tests keep sandbox data, fictional cash, and learning credit from collapsing into one fake wallet.

Challenges we ran into

Keeping three kinds of money honest: Nessie balances, Bank-scene practice cash, and Bubu learning credit.

Keeping AI in its lane: no advice, no “you passed,” no invented rates, still a voice you would actually ask.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

A full loop: sign in, try a choice, refresh, progress is still there. A Bank you can stand in. A portfolio board with real stops. Dr.Bos who can teach and cannot grade. Sponsor sandbox data used read-only, with tests so the key never leaks to the browser.

What we learned

The hard design is who is allowed to say the work is done. Sandbox APIs are gold as evidence to think with, and a trap if you dress them up as the learner’s real bank. If the lesson is Markdown, the team can change the course without rewriting the engine.

What's next for Bubu-Dins

Fill Storyworld’s empty lots (hospital, mall, college) with choices, not posters. Add credit, cars, jobs, and taxes on the same honest loop. Then production auth, tighter citations, and trying it with real students who have to explain the decision, not just click through it.

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