Inspiration
We desired to build something that would help influence people to be better, to help them through the trying and difficult days we are currently experiencing. That's why we created Inspire Me!, a simple and easy way to spread happiness, even when we cant physically be there to do it.
What it does
Inspire Me! provides you with a message carefully selected from a plethora of real and AI generated quotes to ensure you receive a meaningful and unique experience each time you open it. Each quotes will be displayed on beautiful and breath-taking images to further create a calming and inspirational atmosphere, giving you the option to save these amazing images to view once more in the future!
How we built it
To generate additional quotes, we used the Python Natural Language Toolkit to analyze a large sample of quotes, and then had it produce its own quotes. This was done using an n-gram model, which creates sentences by calculating what the next word should be based on the previous n words. The base graphics design of Inspire Me! was built using graphics.py, an open-source implementation of Tkinter. Additionally, Pillow, a fork of PIL, was used to edit, save and resize the images. Finally, Pygame was used to play and loop the background music.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into a couple challenges along the way, the first of which being developing the project idea. We were struggling to think of any plausible ideas, until we finally began to think of the current situation of the world, and what we would want to have available to help support us. Thats how we thought of the idea behind Inspire Me! Another challenge arised in using the Natural Language Toolkit. In our initial approach, we would analyze the sentence structure of the samples, and then by choosing a random structure, it would replace each word with another random word of the corresponding part of speech. This approach failed miserably, forcing us to rethink and redesign, leading us to adopt the n-gram model.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of what we were able to build in the 24 hour time period, since this is our groups first hackathon, and none of us have much experience with coding in a limited timeframe. As such, we are amazed with how much we accomplished, and even if we don't win anything, it was still a great experience and lots of fun!
What we learned
We learnt that organization is very important when coding a project, alongside effectively splitting up a workload to be able to finish a task in a given timeframe. It is very important to know what others are working on, to prevent overlapping roles which make it hard to combine code later on.
What's next for Inspire Me!
Inspire Me! is designed in such a way that anyone can add more images and more quotes, allowing it to expand infinitely beyond what is currently contains. Additionally, we plan on adding more color pallets and themes to the application, allowing for the user to design their own experience.
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