Impression

Inspiration

When we heard about the Watson API, we thought it would be a really exciting idea to have the chance to use such a powerful AI in our hack. When we discovered his literary tone analysis tool, we immediately recognized an opportunity to use Watson to create a very special experience. We wanted to use Watson's literary prowess in the world of poetry.

What it does

The hack uses an assortment of tools and platforms to turn poetry into an extrasensory event. We created a VR experience that takes poetry and displays visuals based on Watson's tonal analysis of a piece of writing. Our original goal was to make the hack good enough to be an application that makes poetry more accessible to the deaf, but time and set backs made it hard to get to that stage of growth.

How we built it

Our hack is based around IBM's Watson so the roots of our projects came from BlueMix and the use of Watson's API. We then transferred it over to Unity so that we could integrate it with Oculus. We used unity's libraries ad C# for the rest of the project.

Challenges we ran into

Our biggest challenge came from an error in BlueMix's system that denied us credentials to the Watson API until mid afternoon Saturday. From then we were hindered mostly by human error and lack of knowledge of the platform and language we were working with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Before this weekend, none of us had ever used any of the tools or languages that we ended up using in our hack. We had never even used an API before and we were able to complete a semi fashionable hack. This was a massive boost to self confidence.

What we learned

We learned an unbelievable amount about teamwork and software development that we couldn't have possibly learned any other way. We loved the experience.