HobbyPals

One problem that I have noticed recently in our generation is that so many kids are spending time on screens rather than exploring their interests and hobbies perhaps because they have no incentive or the experience isn’t very engaging. In fact most teenagers these days typically spend 2.7 hours on screens compared to 19 minutes of participating in sports, recreation, and exercise or merely 18 minutes of reading.

So my solution to this problem was developing an app called Hobbypals. It asks you for some of your interests that you choose to do each day whether that is your favorite sport or a budding curiosity in something else. It also considers constraints such as the weather and time of day to eliminate a hobby that can’t be done at a certain time. For example, if one of your interests was playing tennis outside, but it was raining, MyPal who is the avatar, will recommend your other two hobbies from the interest form which as put on the app, are indoors.

One feature is that if it is weekend and not a special holiday, it will send you and your parents reminders to use your time productively by taking part in these interests. Secondly, which sets HobbyPalz apart, is once confirming that you have indeed done the recommended activities with your parents, it will reward you with something called PalPoints. You get 10 points for each activity you complete, and this acts as an incentive to work towards which can greatly increase the determination a kid has to complete an interest. Eventually once you reach a minimum of a 100 points, you would have the ability to change your avatar, username, etc. and compete with other friends.

This has several benefits like teaching kids discipline and setting right habits, as well as showing them a variety of things and to have an open mindset, which will stick with them throughout their life.

I decided to use code.org to program this app because I have had some experience with it in the past. Most of my code is based on “on event” blocks which result in a switch in screen from a next button, start button, or click and text input. At the beginning of creating this app I did a rough sketch on what screen should have what, how should they be coded, etc. But it has evolved through challenges successes which led to be my final app with 7 screens; a start page, an interest from so Hobbypals can give you relevant suggestions, a home page after that with a basic intro, the recommendations where you and your parents mark all of the activities as completed, a page saying good job, one showing your increase in points, and finally, the home screen summarizing what you did that day and saying I’ll see you tomorrow. Throughout the process so learned a lot like making the app more user friendly by using a text input for hobbies which allows for more user flexibility that my original plan, a drawdown menu. I also learned how to use GitHub where code can be saved, updated, and shared at one spot which is a very helpful innovation.

However, inevitably there were challenges like being able to apply the stored variable input from one of the interest form questions, but hopefully this is something I can improve in the future.

Built With

• code.org
• github
• on-event