KJC-7-Day-Trip

The ultimate 1-week survival language guide for Korea, Japan, China travelers.

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Inspiration

I built this app for travelers planning trips to Korea, Japan, and China who want to pick up essential phrases as quickly and efficiently as possible before their trip.

What it does

Users select the country they're traveling to, the city they plan to visit, and the specific places they want to learn then choose a learning category. Based on that context, using OpenAI model, the app generates essential expressions, so users can practice and get comfortable with the language before and during their trip.

How we built it

I used Codex and GPT 5.6 Sol for the entire project lifecycle, from planning, design to development and validation. With Codex to find and fill my knowledge gaps and it was really good at analyzing unfamiliar areas. I used a "Find my blind spots and interview me" approach, where Codex guided me through the development process by validating and finalizing my ideas.

Challenges we ran into

Since I don't have a design background, building UI parts like the app icon, splash screen and overall layout was challenging. I solved this by asking Codex to generate HTML pages showing three different designs which made it easy to make UI decisions.

I also ran into a critical issue where audio playback worked in the emulator but failed on a real device. To fix it, I added a fallback to Google TTS for cases where the default Samsung TTS didn't work properly. In the end, I got reliable audio playback for Korean, Japanese, and Chinese by defaulting to Google TTS on Android devices that don't natively support those languages.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

7 hours! One weekend! Zero overtime!

The entire app went from concept to a working product in a single weekend, built purely in spare time outside of daily commitments, feels like a real win.

What we learned

I have three main takeaways:

  1. GPT 5.6 Sol is really effective at exploring and mapping out unfamiliar domains.

  2. Using GPT 5.6 Sol to generate multiple different design prototypes for review is a great strategy.

  3. Testing on real devices is an absolute must.

What's next for KJC-7-Day-Trip

  1. Add more countries, cities, and tourist attractions.

  2. Integrate OpenAI's image generation to provide visual context alongside the generated conversations.

  3. Add a speech recognition and evaluation feature to assess user pronunciation and accuracy when practicing expressions.

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