Divvy

a better way to divvy up chores — a web app that manages weekly Google Calendar of household tasks and displays distribution of responsibilities to encourage everyone in the family to pitch in equally

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Inspiration

Historically, women have been primarily responsible for childcare responsibilities and household chores, and this inequality has only been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. With children taking classes from home all the time, moms are having to dedicate more time to their kids than ever before, while juggling their own work responsibilities. They're hanging by a thin thread, and some are even dropping their careers to keep their households running.

See this article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/04/parenting/working-moms-mental-health-coronavirus.html.

What it does and how I built it

Meet Divvy: a web application made with React and the Google Calendar API in a Node.js environment. Divvy uses OAuth2.0 authentication to allow users to sign in via their Google accounts, giving Divvy access to their Google Calendars. Then, Divvy can create and update a weekly household Google Calendar of tasks, which household members are responsible for them, and when they will be done. This calendar will be available when the user visits the regular Google Calendar site, or when the user signs into Divvy!

Divvy also displays the distribution of tasks among family members for the week in a visually appealing manner. If some people are doing more than their fair share, Divvy will alert users. This enables users to then re-delegate tasks so that they are distributed among household members more evenly. Thus, Divvy helps ensure that no one person in the household is shouldering too much of the burden, and that everyone is pitching in to help.

Women shouldn't be set back by the coronavirus pandemic. Let’s say no to the household gender gap!

Challenges I ran into and what I learned

This was my first time working with any Google API, so exploring Google's OAuth2.0 system was really cool, but it was also a bit difficult. The Google Calendar API didn't have a quickstart guide for React, so I had to do a lot of Googling and go through a lot of trial and error until I got things to work. Also, since I was working with Google Calendar events, I had to deal with a lot of date and time formatting, which gave me a bit of a headache!

What's next for Divvy

Making the web app responsive, and maybe developing a mobile app for Divvy to make it more accessible. I would love to develop a points system that incentivizes household members to complete tasks. I also think it would be good to share Divvy with friends and family, ask for feedback, and iterate on that!

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