Kioku

The perfect cup of coffee. A clever comeback. Warm fuzzy moments with friends. Introducing Kioku, a simple mobile app that keeps track of all those little moments that might otherwise fade away.

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Inspiration

In the age of social media where so many things are competing for our attention, it's hard to keep track of the small little things that make us smile. The members of our team struggled to find a way to keep track of these little memories - writing them down in journals, making messy google documents, taking photos of pieces of paper, or just not bothering. This led us to design Kioku, an app which aims to centralize and simplify the process of jotting down these special moments.

What it does

Named after the Japanese word for memory, the app allows users to key in a short description of a moment that made them happy, and also to tag the memories with specific keywords for easy reference later. Furthermore, Kioku will periodically remind users of certain memories, and will invite them to share the memories with those special people. We hope that through Kioku, people will remember the good times and those whom they share them with.

How we built it

We developed a prototype for our application using proto.io. We also tried to develop a framework for the mobile application using XCode, but we were unable to complete it within the time alotted.

Challenges we ran into

As three novice programmers, we were unsure how to proceed with app development in iOS, something that none of us had much experience with on our own. Using XCode was challenging, as we were unfamiliar with its programming ecosystem. It also required us to learn new things beyond the scope of what we learned in our introductory CS courses. While it may be too much for us to completely overcome within 24 hours, we have not given up on learning how to use XCode, and hope to seek out guidance in the coming weeks.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was a new experience for all of us. We could have tried something that we were all familiar with, but we wanted to create something that we would genuinely enjoy ourselves, which did require more skill than we currently have. Nonetheless, the hours we've spent poring over UI designs will no doubt come in handy once we get more of a handle on iOS development.

What we learned

We learned a tremendous amount about brainstorming for ideas and researching already existing alternatives to solutions that we proposed. This encouraged us to develop our ideas further and we eventually obtained something unique and distinct from other existing ideas. We also learned how to approach new and unfamiliar software, as we had never used XCode for development. This required us to look up existing documentation and troubleshoot problems as and when they appeared.

What's next for Kioku

Although we were not able to complete what we had hoped to complete during this hackathon, we gained invaluable experience in brainstorming and prototyping app ideas. We are quite fond of this idea, and hope to continue developing it throughout the semester, getting guidance from more experienced developers to help us execute our ideas.

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