get UFinanced

example questions we made
a photo of the fun mini-game

Inspiration

We were inspired by students that are constantly overcoming personal finance challenges step-by-step. Students, even before COVID-19, typically learned about personal finance right when they run into money challenges. We wanted to help students, especially the young ones, on fundamentals of personal finance with our retro game, get UFinanced. That way, students not only learn about finance early in their lives, but can also have fun while playing games.

What it does

get UFinanced helps students learn about personal finance by answering a series of questions on personal finance fundamentals and learning from the virtual explanations. After answering these questions, students can then play a fun mini-game where they collect digital cherries with their virtual character.

How we built it

We built it using Python on Microsoft MakeCode Arcade to customize the graphics and also get experience with the software new to all of us!

Challenges we ran into

We noticed that the platform was very small and that we had to condense our questions while still making them clear for our users. Nonetheless, we realized that clear and concise questions would make it easier for younger audiences to understand.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the newfound knowledge we built from this hackathon. None of us had coding experience in building retro games nor experience with Microsoft MakeCode Arcade and we learned so much.

What we learned

We learned that teamwork is vital to getting the job done, especially on a time crunch. We also learned so much about coding in Python and building games that will appeal to users. The first-hand experience we received from this hackathon was unlike any other classes we have taken.

What's next for get UFinanced

We hope to impact an even greater audience by adding levels of expertise for students who have surpassed the beginner's finance knowledge level. We would integrate information on topics like opening Roth IRAs, credit cards, investing accounts, savings accounts, and even more!

Our Slack team leader can be found here: https://swamphacks-vii.slack.com/archives/D01L3940012