KeepFocus

Inspiration

We were inspired by our personal lack of motivation and productivity during this quarantine. Since we were sent home because of the coronavirus pandemic, we had to continue our studies at home. However, it has been hard to stay focused and motivated on completing our studies while faced with distractions at home. Personally, I have been playing video games and sleeping more than actually studying. Since we knew that these problems are being faced by every university student, we decided to make an app to try to help those like ourselves who are feeling a lack of motivation right now and to help them focus and work hard to achieve success in their academics.

What it does

This is an app that incorporates three effective study techniques in one app and allows the user to choose which one they want to incorporate. The first study technique is the Pomodoro technique, which is when someone continuously works for a period of time and then takes a short break; this was incorporated in the app using a timer. The second technique is "Don't break the chain" which is a technique in which you try to outline the goals you want to achieve in one day and then cross them off as you continue to achieve them; this is done using an expandable list. The third technique is "Get Work Done" which allows the user to add their own short term and long term goals in the app and cross them off as they continue to complete them. The app also has a feature in which you can keep the phone locked on the app to minimize distractions and it presents a random motivational quote each time the app is opened. The user is free to use whichever one of the techniques they want or a mixture of the techniques.

How I built it

The app was built in Android Studio. We used XML for the front-end User Interface and we used Java for the back-end aspects of the app such as for the timer and the lists.

Challenges I ran into

Aritra Saha: The challenges that I ran into was trying to make the list expandable and being able to add user input to an expandable list based on whether the user was inputting a task or a goal. Also, I struggled with trying to add buttons to individual tasks in the app, something I was not able to accomplish.

Aritra Banik: When creating the Pomodoro timer I struggled with getting basic functionality such as allowing the user to edit the time halfway through and for the progress bar to decrease as the time went by. I also had problems with incorporating a menu section on the top right due to the tedious default layout that android studio already had setup.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Aritra Saha: One thing that I am really proud of is that I was able to save the information for "Get Work Done" to an external file so that if you were to close the app the information would stay there when you open it again. I was also proud that I was able to make it so that the user could add their own input to the lists which was something that took me a long time.

Aritra Banik: I’m really proud that I was able to get my timer to work effectively as this aided in making the user experience nice. I was also proud when I was able to figure out how to create fragments in android studio and maintain their state while switching between them.

What I learned

Aritra Saha: I became familiar with Java and XML, two languages that I had never used before. I also learned how apps work and what they need to make them work, such as gradle scripts, layout files and helper classes.

Aritra Banik: I gained a lot more experience with Java and was introduced to XML. I also learned what goes into developing an app and what kind of skills are required.

What's next for KeepFocus

For the future, we are going to continue developing the app so that it will be ready for release and we will try to add more features like a login function(using Google Firebase?), making the app available on the web and on IOS, adding a calendar so that you can see what techniques you have been using on which day, and different modes such as a dark mode or different alarms for the timer.