MotivateMate

The logo.
The main screen. Edit, add and manage the task list here.
Input or edit tasks here.
Achievement screen. Keeps track of how many tasks you've completed!

Inspiration

As students, we know how hard it is to stay focussed on your schoolwork in normal circumstances, let alone when under quarantine. We wanted to create something to help students learn in these tough times.

What is it?

MotivateMate allows you to create a simple to-do list, with a unique twist. MotivateMate encourages you to take it day by day, automatically resetting your to-do list every day. On top of this, MotivateMate has a motivational aspect to keep you going through your tasks, including reminding you of yesterday's achievements.

How we made it

MotivateMate was built using Java. We started with a simple idea and built it up using diagrams and brainstorming boards. Many hours of coding later, the app took shape, and we added some finishing details to wrap it up.

Challenges we ran into

Our team is a group of friends with a passion for coding. Normally, when participating in hackathons, we are able to work together in person. Of course, for this hackathon, we couldn't do that. This brought on the challenge of being able to communicate effectively over the internet. Luckily, we were able to use some awesome tools available on the internet such as Discord, Google Docs, and Trello to coordinate our efforts.

Another challenge we faced was trying to get all of our development environments to work properly. Our teammate was unable to get his Javafx to install properly, resulting in him losing a lot of time to code. Fortunately, we were eventually able to fix the issue as a team and get back to work.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We went into this hackathon with the simple goal of helping the Covid-19 crisis cause in any way we could. We are proud to have participated in this hackathon and helped make the world a little brighter in these bleak times.

Another specific place where we were proud as a team was in our planning efforts. Often, it is too easy to jump straight into coding without a focussed goal for the project in place. For this hackathon, we took our time to agree on the aim of our project and made a good task list to keep us on track.

What we learned

A lot of skills were learned in the process of creating MotivateMate. For a couple of team members, this was a first experience using GitHub for a larger-scale project. We were able to get the hang of it after a bit of a learning curve. Otherwise, we also learned about JavaFX and how to use it for our user interface.

What's next for MotivateMate

In the future, we would love to perfect MotivateMate. Given a bit more time, we could smooth out the bumps, and fix a few bugs. As well, MotivateMate is an application that can currently only be run on a computer, but we would love to see it work on mobile too. Finally, we would like to add features to allow students to connect with their friends, adding another angle for motivation.