Momento

Inspiration

We watched a video titled "70 People Ages 5-75 Answer: What Was the Happiest Day of Your Life? | Glamour", and it got us thinking about the three main parts of our lives: the past, the present, and the future. We usually don’t consider all three parts at once, even though we really should. As such, we wanted to create an application that would help people reconcile with each aspect of their lives.

What it does

Momento has two main features: a cloud section and a time capsule section. The cloud section presents the user with three main interfaces, one for each time period. In each one, the user is presented with a prompt regarding the time period, and can submit a response. The user is then shown a graphic displaying submissions from other users. Using the slider at the bottom, the user can switch between time periods, each corresponding thematically to a different time of day. The time capsule section allows the user to send a time capsule message to a number of their choice at various intervals of time.

How we built it

We used Angular Ionic for the frontend, the Twilio API to send text messages, and CockroachDB for the initial foundation of our backend.

Challenges we ran into

We weren’t familiar with simultaneous client and server side development, causing us to run into issues with CORS dependencies and access. We also ran into issues with implementing CockroachDB. We wanted to try something new since we already used Google Cloud Firestore in a previous project, but found it to be more difficult than we expected.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

None of us had mobile development experience prior to this hackathon, so we were proud to be able to learn and build this application within 36 hours.

What we learned

Software development is not done overnight (despite the goal of this hackathon). It is an iterative process that requires perseverance, flexibility, and a commitment to creating the best product possible with the resources available.

What's next for Momento

We hope to expand our database implementation to utilize CockroachDB’s full library of data management capabilities. We can also extend Twilio to send users weekly messages that a new prompt is available.