My Sustainable Life

Inspiration

The concept of this project came from a series of brainstorming. When attending the orientation and seeing the “Most Impact” prize category, I began to think about unique and new solutions that could make a difference with sustainability in mind. I considered how everyone has their own goals and motivations, but also how they have the chance to make more environmentally-aware decisions. Therefore, the idea of a habit tracker with a focus on sustainability emerged.

What it does

My Sustainable Life combines the fun of a digital pet game with the benefit of a habit tracker. Sustainability begins in the small choices we make in our everyday lives. These sustainable habits are promoted in My Sustainable Life via pre-determined sustainable task suggestions for the user to complete. The user can also create personal custom habits they want to uphold. The program incentivizes the users to stick to these habits via their own digital pet. Their pet's state is dependent on their adherence to their custom habits and/or the sustainable habits.

The home page contains an avatar -their pet- in the center with pop ups surrounding. These pop ups show categories of habits, each with a checklist of tasks the user can do to help their avatar (and themselves). If the user sticks coles to the habits, their avatar will flourish. For example, if the user checks off a “compost” task, their avatar will gain health. When the user does not stick to their habits, the avatar will dwindle. For custom habits, the pet will gain 1XP, for sustainable habits, 2XP.

This app targets anyone looking to be held accountable for the good habits they want to build. From people who need incentive to make changes in their lives, to people who are simply looking for a low-maintenance game that also organizes their goals. What better way to represent your progress than with an adorable animal?

How we built it

We built the project by combining the abilities of our varying team members. With Vansh and I being second-year students, we only had experience with front-end coding using JavaScript and HTML/CSS. Mandeep and Samin, having knowledge with React, streamlined the process to create the user interface while also teaching us the basics of React. Samin and Mahdis also focused largely on the back-end of the project.

Overall, the project took a combination of honing our individuals skills and collaborating with each other.

Challenges we ran into

We faced challenges when determining the logistics of My Sustainable Life. It took considerable time to come to a consensus and understanding of the project goals. We considered our user base, how to set apart this habit tracker from others, and how to make the program interactive. There were definitely periods of misunderstanding, and times we encountered roadblocks when not being able to conceptualize our end-user experience. We also faced technical challenges as one would expect. We had issues creating animations of the pet, the functionality when adding habits, and creating a visually appealing user interface.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we could bring an idea we believe in to life. Trying to work efficiently as a team can either be catastrophic or a major success. We are proud that everyone could contribute and collaborate, learning and celebrating our skills.

With the program itself, we are proud that we could create a functioning platform to add and complete tasks, and see the visual of the user’s virtual pet. Despite time-constraints, we were able to work together to show an idea and its potential.

What we learned

We learned that the story and intent behind a project takes considerable time. To build something that the user will understand and want to use, involves a lot of understanding of many factors. We learned how to work effectively as a team, challenging and combining each other’s ideas. I specifically gained technical skills through learning React and Git basics.

What's next for My Sustainable Life

A reason we thought My Sustainable Life was a great path to follow is its potential to improve, upgrade, and expand. If we continued this project, functionalities we would add include pet animations and direct interaction, pet upgrades, drag and drop features for the tasks, and deductions of pet health from inactivity.