MICA - Virtual Budget Pet

Inspiration

Every other month I would promise myself that this is the month for change. I will begin to track my spending and create a budget for myself in order to save up. However, every month I find myself back at the original spot, spending much more than I am happy with, I struggle so much with consistency. Thus, I created MICA in order to encourage myself and others to begin to build a habit in a fun way!

What it does

MICA allows the user to input their desired weekly budget and weekly saving goals, which are then used to calculate the cost of taking care of their virtual pet on a daily. This way, the user does not feel like they're always trying to not spend, instead is spending on virtual goods to take care of their pets. Spending anything on the pet takes out the money from the weekly budget, thus by the end of the month the amount spent on their pet is actually the money that they have saved.

How we built it

The app is primarily built on Thunkable, with pet illustrations done in Procreate.

Challenges we ran into

As a first-time user of Thunkable and having limited knowledge of coding, it was quite difficult to execute my vision initially. I was really struggling with the syntax and debugging process when the app variables did not compile the way I imagined, but with time and a bit of googling, I was able to fix a lot of the mistakes.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that the app is functional and could actually give people an opportunity to try it out and see if it works for their budgeting journey. Moreover, I really like the aesthetic and minimalistic design of the app.

What we learned

I learned some of the basic functions that go into app development, including both the design phase and the actual build of the code for the app to be interactive. And moreover, some tasks seem impossible at first, but breaking them down definitely helps to carry out the execution.

What's next for MICA - Virtual Budget Pet

MICA can be considered an MVP, a very basic prototype that still needs a lot of editing and development. However, MICA can definitely be further developed to expand and improve the user experience. For example, embedding a function that automatically decreases the budget when the user uses credit cards, or even more complimentary pieces for the virtual pet, like outfits for the Halloween season, etc.

Built With

• procreate
• thunkable