Money Mind

Inspiration

The inspiration behind this app was to educate users on best financial practices in several different aspects of finance. We knew that a game with a social aspect would be a great incentive to attract users, so it came natural to us to develop a platform intersecting these two domains.

What it does

The goal of this project was to design a gamified financial app that makes personal financial literacy fun, intuitive, and social. Users can explore common topics in the world of finance - such as budgeting, savings, taxes, etc. - through quizzes with interactive feedback based on performance metrics. Through this, users can identify both their strengths and weaknesses, along with an avenue to build on those skills.

On a more fun note, this app includes a competitive aspect that allows users to compete against each other. This is benchmarked through a leaderboard - so that they are able to visualize their growth against other like-minded individuals.

With engaging real-life scenarios that simulate common financial problems, this app allows users to gain confidence with their own personal finance, on a day-to-day basis - in a low risk environment. Through MoneyMind, we hope to spread personal financial literacy in a fun, interactive manner that enables constant growth and learning.

How we built it

We used a Next.js front-end written in typescript, utilized MongoDB Atlas for storing and tracking user information - login credentials, point totals, etc., and OpenAI API to generate quiz questions and give suggestions for how users can improve their financial literacy - emphasizing on our idea of a highly personalized learning experience. Throughout development we leveraged tools such as MongoDB Compass to view and update the database, and Postman to test API routes.

Challenges we ran into

In the beginning, it was difficult to find a project idea. We wanted a project that would tackle challenges the sponsors presented, aligned with our values, also technically intensive. Traditional solutions to generative AI challenges such as chatbots or recommenders just didn’t sit well with us because of their simplicity overuse. Thus, we spent over five hours brainstorming an idea, ultimately creating a project we are all proud of.

One of the major challenges we ran into was the use of external APIs and navigating their use cases. We ran into rate limits with the OpenAI API, which unfortunately consumed a good chunk of time, but we ultimately learned lots from the debugging process. Additionally, we were forced to become very cautious when performing pull requests. Each of us completed significant functionalities within the same timeframe, resulting in many pull requests being opened in the same time window. Keeping a close eye on the way the merges were handled was crucial to ensure that functionality was maintained once all branches converged, and we certainly experienced our own set of failures.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Given the unnecessary amount of time we spent choosing a project idea, we were quite satisfied with how the UI and functionality of the application were both quite strong. Each of us has a vested personal interest in this particular domain, so it was very fulfilling to see our ideas come to fruition.

What we learned

One thing we learned through the process of this exuberant hackathon was the value of preparation and ideation. We spent a disproportionate amount of time on choosing a project idea, leaving us with a limited time window to develop our project. Ultimately, we accomplished a majority of the features we had in mind, but we could all agree that a little bit more proactivity and decisiveness could have improved our experiences by a good margin.

What's next for Money Mind

Some potential next steps for Money Mind may include an expansion on the social aspect of the platform, with a more compelling competitive aspect to better incentive students. We would also like to expand the problem sets, and provide more tailored advice to specific scenarios that users are currently experiencing.