NextStep

The Idea

We all hate taxes; it's not a unique trait that sets us apart. Quite the opposite, actually, the only people who would appreciate your lack of tax knowledge would be the IRS. Getting in trouble with the law because of ignorance already implies a fatal flaw in our teaching system. We aim to fix this issue and make up for Rocker Fellers' failed school system. One that has been plaguing America for centuries, and we start by teaching young adults how to live in the modern world on their own, making it an enticing, fun experience rather than a chore. We basically made a game!

What we have learned

When we were brainstorming, we had a very common story pop up multiple times in our group. This story would usually come in different flavors and fonts, but it all boiled down to people losing money over situations they could have prevented had they known better at the time. Many people try to take advantage of the naivety of young adults, which is an unfortunate common trend. We also learned that the education system is quite a failure, which really isn't a shock. This does go to show, however, how unprepared the average 18-year-old is despite them being expected to fend for themselves at this age. We hopefully aim to give back to the community by introducing a tool that helps provide that knowledge and creates a safer and less scary adulthood transition. Creating young adults who know how to fend for themselves in the real world.

Building process

We had many ideas, and throwing words and ideas against the wall would only get us so far. We started with what we truly wanted, as the only thing distinguishing us from those around us is our idea, given that we all have the same tools at our disposal. By that logic, we wanted to make it nuanced and unique. If we could make it stand out, we have a chance of winning. Our idea was unique, and we just needed the right type of product to sell it. We started by creating a diagram of all the features and details our app would have, allowing us to showcase the bigger picture while showing the AI the smaller details. This made narrowing down the final product much easier and manageable. This process took us all day, but we came out with a product we believed to be perfect. It had multiplayer, leaderboards, and a point system. It feels like a game with crazy and wacky scenarios and teaches you real lessons that you could and might need in your daily adulting life.

Challenges

Our largest hurdle in the beginning was the lack of ideas we had at the start. We would go through many feasible and solid ideas, but it was hard to sell each other on the ideas that a group member made. So, we started a little later than usual, between 2:00 pm and 3:00 pm. We then ran into our biggest issue, which was complexity, and due to time constraints, there were some things we could not implement everything we wished to implement. We, of course, had issues with bugs like every other team, but nothing that patience and clever prompt engineering couldn't fix. Our biggest challenge was creating time while trying to make time for all of us to sleep at some point. We resolved this idea through a pattern of shifts and alarms, which worked better than we expected, acting like a natural sleep deterrent, so we wouldn't all fall asleep at the same time.

Built With

• ai
• vibecoding