Countable

Save time, achieve your goals: Countable!

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Inspiration

How many have signed up for self-paced online courses and never completed them? For example, Coursera, LinkedIn Learning, or Udemy. Did you experience feelings of burnout, no motivation, and lack of community? Well, we have the solution for you! Here’s where we come in: We are Countable, a web-based interface that fosters a community of accountability partners and autodidacts. We connect goal-driven users with shared areas of interest/courses to accountability partners who help them achieve their learning goals. Think of it as the accountability partner you have at the gym! We put the count in accountable!

Our project Countable is named after the two goals of the hackathon we aimed to complete. The Productivity aspect, where you can Count the progress you have made since using our project, and the Learning aspect with the number of new things you have learned because you had the discipline to go out and do it.

Backstory

We’ve all taken asynchronous courses before and we all know how it goes. First, you start out excited to cook with Gordon Ramsay or to build your first SQL database. Next, you follow along until you either end up with your kitchen on fire or end up on page 37 of Google trying to find a fix for your code. Finally, you curl up on the floor contemplating life. With no support, we find ourselves stuck in this perpetual cycle. So, we wanted to create a community of asynchronous learners to ensure accountability and make learning easy.

What it does

  • Summary of the Feature: We aim to bridge the gap between asynchronous courses and the lack of community in them. We are on a mission to create accountability partners between self-learners in these courses and create a wider, inclusive community of learners who are goal-driven. Learning communities are available to autodidacts in popular asynchronous courses (CS50, CodeCademy, FreeCodeCamp). Accountability partners can be found in these groups to encourage and learn from others.

  • Outline of the Impact: The impact of Countable will be seen in the adoption of the product across users who seek to be kept accountable for their goals. The results will include developing and growing a community of like-minded, goal-driven users who can share and collaborate with other users who are on track to achieve the same or similar goals.

Our hope is to create an inclusive, welcoming environment that fosters productivity, community, and most importantly: accountability.

How we built it

  • React.js
  • Express.js
  • JavaScript
  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Github
  • Figma
  • Canva

Challenges we ran into

The initial challenge we encountered was truly understanding the problem we wanted to solve. Initially, we dived into the plethora of solutions we could use to address the pitfalls of asynchronous learning, but we didn’t think about why asynchronous learning fails. Under Max’s guidance, we realized that we needed to hone in on a familiar struggle that asynchronous learners face. We eventually discerned that accountability (so you stay committed) and community (so you feel loved) are essential to learning. With this, we narrowed our project scope and focused on a solution to tackle our frustrations.

Lastly, we experienced a few challenges in implementing some technical aspects of the project like React and De$o but we resolved them by taking a step back, communicating the blockers we are facing, and pivoting directions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a unique user experience prototype platform
  • Design document with features and scope
  • Wireframing on Figma
  • Working with De$o

What we learned

The main things we have learned are that collaboration and teamwork are essential for completing a project. Clear communication of the skills we can contribute, task delegation, and appropriate time estimates are beneficial to efficiently and effectively produce a Minimum Viable Product. We also learned that ideas can change, grow, or be molded into completely new ideas. We also gained insight into how to work under pressure, and prioritization of what we can accomplish vs. what we hope to accomplish. We learned how to better understand the diversity of thought and acknowledge everyone's unique perspective and additions they add to the team. Finally, we learned how to focus more on the problem that we are trying to solve - understanding the problem and analyzing the problem, before implementing or ideating a possible solution.

What's next for Countable

We plan on creating virtual coworking environments for our learners to allow learners to collaborate without having to travel to increase collaboration, productivity, and flexibility among users. Additionally, we plan on implementing incentives for accountability partners who successfully complete their learning goals. These include exclusive discounts on learning materials, early-access to popular courses, and more.

Eventually, we want to foster an autodidact community outside of just asynchronous courses. We want self-learners around the world to form a strong support system filled with resources, opportunities, and conversations. We want learning to be as accessible and easy as possible.

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