Jam Genius

Us hard at work coding
Index page of the project

Inspiration

Every member of the team holds a great interest in music, whether they have a favorite artist that they listen to or enjoy the art of instrument, we wanted to incorporate one of things we all collectively enjoy into a test of trivia for others to gauge this interest. Not wanting to exclude a group of people and their like for a genre we wanted to include a wide array of categories for people to choose from and have fun with while also learning new things about the world of music.

What it does

This application connects to the OpenTrivia API to generate 10–30 music-themed trivia questions for users to enjoy. As players answer questions, the app tracks their progress and provides a final score at the end. Additionally, it maintains a leaderboard that showcases the top three high scores, encouraging users to compete for the best results.

How we built it

We organized our team into two sub-teams: front-end and back-end. For the first five hours, each team focused on their respective stacks to set up the core functionality. Afterward, we regrouped to help each other troubleshoot and integrate both sides, ensuring smooth interaction between the front-end and back-end components.

Challenges we ran into

This project was met with a lot of challenges on the way. In the beginning, it took a lot of time to design the index page and all of its elements, including basic formatting and styling. Later when we were creating our backend API, we ran into bugs that had to be troubleshooted and fixed. Towards the end of the hackathon, our React integration of the front-end and back-end was facing a lot of issues. Throughout our challenges we faced along the way, we all collaborated and tackled them efficiently to succeed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The ability to foster growth with our limited knowledge in our respective field, and support each other through a very rough time to tackle unfamiliar languages and challenging concepts . It is an accomplishment that we sat down and collaborated on a full stack project for 12 hours for the first time. We worked with different frameworks and softwares for the first time, and successfully developed an application.

What we learned

A greater understanding of HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and Python and their practicality to the different sides of coding. Backend and frontend integration. Flask and React frameworks to integrate greater functionality for our application. How to work in a team environment for long periods of time. We also learned that not everything with web development comes easy, and that there will always be obstacles on the journey.

What's next for Jam Genius

Although Jam Genius is up and running for ZotHacks, there are still a lot of creative features that could be added. For example, we can implement a database with a table for high scores for players to compete with each other. We can also add a high score page on our front-end to present these scores to players.