King's Quest

Inspiration

The team’s primary inspiration for designing King's Quest comes from existing loyalty and fitness applications that reward users for participating in societies as well as lack of student motivation. Much like how fitness apps encourage users to stay active by earning points or incentives, King's Quest adapts these concepts to university life. By awarding points for attending society events and offering tangible discounts and rewards, we aim to make student engagement more interactive and enjoyable. Many students struggle with a lack of social experiences that are crucial for developing real-world skills, such as problem-solving and confidence. King's Quest makes this opportunity more seamless and rewarding for the user.

What it does

King's Quest is an application that gamifies student engagement by rewarding users for participating in university society events. Users earn points for attending events, which can then be redeemed for exclusive KCL rewards and discounts. Rewards can range from food discounts to free exclusive KCL prizes. The app allows students to track their progress and compete with others students on leaderboards, creating a fun, interactive way to get involved on campus. By transforming ordinary activities into a rewarding experience, King's Quest fosters a more connected and active student community through creating a more promising university life.

How we built it

The application was built primarily using JavaScript and Nuxt.js, which together provided a solid foundation for both front-end and back-end functionality. JavaScript was the core programming language used throughout the application, allowing us to implement interactive features, such as real-time event data fetching, updating leaderboards, and handling user inputs. JavaScript's versatility and rich ecosystem made it an ideal choice for creating an engaging, user-friendly interface while ensuring smooth transitions and actions throughout the app.

Challenges we ran into

There were a variety of challenges that were experienced head on throughout the development of the project. One example would be fetching the data from the society events, which initially presented an issue and was then intrinsically solved with team collaboration. We fetched the data from the Huzzle website, where most of the data for society events is mainly located, however it provided a complicated problem as not all societies integrated their events on the platform, creating gaps in data. Another challenge was time management, given the provided time of 5 hours, our team of 4 had to learn how to effectively manage this time whilst formulating the idea, designing the concept and programming the application itself. Furthermore, the testing and integration of all the components together was primarily a challenge due to the time restraints and high-pressure environment.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team is incredibly proud of the accomplishments we’ve achieved so far with the King's Quest Project. We successfully created an interactive, gamified experience that encourages student engagement through rewarding users for attending society events. The integration of Nuxt.js and JavaScript allowed us to develop a fast, dynamic platform with smooth navigation and real-time interaction. With the theme of gamification, we opted for a more pixelated theme for our logo and icons. The app's ability to track points and students on a leaderboard enables more engagement and motivation for students attending the university. Each milestone, such as formulating the design concepts and developing the physical application itself, has enabled our team to build a fully functioning application exceeding our expectations.

What we learned

The development of King's Quest enabled our team to gain valuable insights into future projects. Given the limited time availability, we effectively learnt how to manage our tasks effectively. Additionally, we learned how to stay flexible and adapt to unexpected challenges, such as fetching incomplete data and troubleshooting integration issues. These challenges taught us how to think creatively, problem-solve under pressure, and pivot when necessary. We also gained deeper insight into the technical aspects of development, such as accessing data, application testing, and ensuring that all components functioned smoothly. By pushing through these obstacles and learning as we went, we not only built a functional application but also gained critical skills that will help us be more efficient and resilient in future projects

What's next for King's Quest

The King's Quest Project has a number of exciting possibilities to grow, one method is through personalised recommendations of events according to the user's profile. For example, if a user studies a language, they may be recommended language societies to accompany this. We can also implement user feedback on the application for future developments and updates, this enables the King's Quest Project to expand and cater towards the students themselves.