Hobbot

Inspiration

Inspiration for Hobbot came from two YouTube videos, titled ‘be the coolest person you know’ by findlepop and ‘The Exhausting Exploitation of Hobbies’ by chon digital, which both focus on the need to “perfect” and monetise hobbies, especially on social media. On reflection, these two videos resonated with us, because though social media has allowed us to share our activities and projects outside of work and studies, it has also taken away the relaxing quality of the hobbies we choose to pursue in our spare time. Rather than improve our mood and boost our self esteem, attempting extracurricular activities can be daunting and stressful for some.

What it does

Hobbot is a companion application that allows the user to pursue their hobbies without pressure and fear of failure. Hobbot encourages the user to reflect on their hobbies through self-reflective trails, and encouraging messages with an interactive chatbot. Users can also create multiple Hobbots with names and chosen colours for each of their hobbies, allowing them to have conversations and notifications tailored to each individual hobby.

How we built it

Hobbot was first designed using Canva, built using Flutter, and the designs were exported using FlutterFlow.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, Hobbot was going to have hobby tracking features that allowed the user to measure hobby-specific metrics and set goals, e.g. measuring the number of pages read in a day, but this idea was disregarded after we realised this would be too similar to other habit-tracking apps and could possibly reinforce feelings of inadequacy and perfection if users decided to share their hobby stats online. We realised that this would be counterproductive to the goal of Hobbot, which is to help dispel perfectionism and pressure. In the early stages of planning, this was the primary idea for Hobbot, so it was a challenge to design an application that would actively encourage users not to track their habits and instead participate in them mindfully.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

After two members of our team dropped out, and another seemed to withdraw, the rest of us adapted to the situation and managed to design and partially implement Hobbot.

What we learned

We learned that time management and clear communication are vital for success. In particular, we developed our teamwork and project management skills, learning to support one another, adapt our approach after setbacks and collaborate effectively within a team. Strong leadership skills were also developed and further reinforced by our team leader, Venus, who distributed tasks according to skill, led communications and established plans for the project. In development of our technical skills, we used design software to visualise the UI of Hobbot, and Flutter, an open-source UI software development kit, was used to code and implement our application.

What's next for Hobbot

Next, Hobbot could become a web app, complete with cloud data-saving so users could save their progress and access their Hobbots from several devices. The app could also include a private and personal feed, a reflection space without likes, streaks, or social pressure. To make each experience more unique, users could customise their Hobbots even further with different personality types. Future features could also include task analysis questionnaires and a notepad for users to record their thoughts.

Built With

• flutter