Buzz Words

Find out what the buzz is all about!

Inspiration

Transition into higher education is difficult, not only academically but also socially, especially for international students. All the international students on our team have personally encountered challenges with understanding British slang when starting university, which heavily affected our abilities to fully immerse into communities. Even our local teammates differed in regional slang, attaching different names and meanings to different objects. A recent study in the UK showed that 70% of international students encounter unfamiliar British slang daily that they haven’t specifically studied, and we hope to tackle this issue and optimise the student experience of incorporating local British slang into their vocabularies.

What it does

Introducing Buzz Words, a website that provides the tools to optimise cultural immersion. Main features:

Slang translator that provides the meaning of input slang
Events calendar of cultural events at UK universities, with a filter function to only show events at your university
Mini slang-learning game
"My Slang History": a personal library of slang
Profile Customisation - add clothes and accessories to your bee!

How we built it

We utilised VSCode Copilot to make the base for our website. Then, with the help of Gemini, we developed the back-end of the translator and events calendar, equipping our code with a sample database of slang and university events. We used vector drawing software to design sprites for the profile customisation element of our website.

Challenges we ran into

Narrowing down the problem we wish to tackle and developing an attainable solution
Learning VSCode, GameMaker, Github basics and website development from scratch
Struggling to upload our work onto the Github repository
MANY technical issues with how to collaborate on files and laptops breaking down
Having to split our 600 line index html into separate files

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Built the website with functioning translation and events calendar (including developing the translation function from after midnight!)
Multiple ways to integrate social aspects
Scalable! Lots of ideas
Learned code organisation on VSCode

What we learned

Github: Setting up our repository, learning what pull and push requests mean
Javascript: Used in the backend for our translation feature and the calendar
HTML: all of our frontend
Gamemaker: learned how to add dialogue boxes with a quiz system in gamemaker
Krita: how to generate scalable vector images

What's next for Buzz Words

Self-sustainable translator powered by Gemini, expanding database with slang from global universities and cultures
Playback function of inputted slang powered by ElevenLabs
Leaderboard for mini-game
Self-sustainable events calendar from Google
Social aspects; add your friends and create a thriving community!