paperwall.

A fun app that quizzes the user on their financial literacy and empowers individuals by providing tools to achieve financial independence.

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Inspiration

Through a discussion about Critical Studies of Race and Ethnicity with Professor Michael Wilcox, the topic of financial literacy and the disparity it has caused in the US was brought up, and we noticed how alarming the situation was. The statistics revealed serious problems rooted in information assymetry among socioeconomic classes, so we wanted to develop an app that would educate people of all ages, especially the youth, on various financial topics to help them establish financial literacy and confidence.

What it does

We designed paperwall., a mobile app which teaches children, teenagers, young adults, and really everybody, about personal finance through a series of fun interactive quizzes, videos, and other resources. For each question that is asked, four possible answers appear, and the user has to guess the correct one. Our interface will then reveal if the answer was correct or not, and regardless of the guess made, we also provide an explanation page detailing the reason for the correct answer, as well as a link to a website where the user can learn more about that topic.

How we built it

We built this app entirely using Bubble. We used text, buttons, and additional features to provide an interactive experience. We designed our logo using Notability.

Challenges we ran into

Various challenges were faced while building our product. We initially wanted to build our app through code (using the C++ language), and we actually have a basic working version of our process running in terminal. However, we struggled with implementing our code into an application platform that was presentable and accessible for people to use, so we ended up having to take a no-code approach and focused on delivering a functional app using Bubble. We also had a lot of ideas for features that we wanted to incorporate, but given our lack of time we were not able to implement them into our product. Hence, we had to make team decisions on what to prioritize.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are all so proud of what we were able to accomplish. This was the first time participating in a hackathon for all of us, so we had to overcome a steep learning curve. Writing code for an assignment outside of our classes was a big challenge, partly because we are not given instructions on what/how to write, and mainly because we had to learn to work with new software and interfaces. We are also extremely proud of how we came together and made collective agreements in times when we needed to pivot. Working in a team, it was crucial for all of us to discuss ideas, be open to contributions, and put our different skillsets to use. We were able to do that successfully, yet the biggest accomplishment for this event was doing it all while having fun.

What we learned

Our main takeaways from this experience is that coding should not be restricted to the classroom. There is so much that can be programmed in this world, and a lot of it can make a lasting positive impact. And it's so much fun to implement! Problem-solving and seeing the results of your work are highly rewarding.

What's next for paperwall.

Moving forward, we want our app to contain some of the features that we did not have the time or experience to implement during the event. We would like to create an open-source project where users can contribute individual questions about financial literacy to a csv file, which we would then approve to our app. This feature would be a great way for individuals to meaningfully share their knowledge, democratizing access to information about personal finance. Another feature we would like to implement is a rewards-based system, where users can collect points for every question they answer correctly. Such a system will motivate users to engage with the app more and thus learn more indispensable knowledge.

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