Inspiration
Originally, the idea of Starbox came as a tool to help students study. With so many different studying techniques and methods out on the internet and the rise of the tough habit of "Doomscrolling", lowering students' attention spans. Students are distracted by the anxious thought of receiving a notification from their phone, which leads to less attentive learning and more distractions. Starbox seeks to utilize this ideology to use the power of notifications to actively deter students from checking their social media.
What it does
With so many factors for college students to keep track of, Starbox helps to keep it simple by organizing your work from your Calendar into a list of tasks. A simple To-Do list could help you achieve your goals quicker; however, what separates Starbox from these tools is its unique way of reminding students to stay on track. Starbox uses notifications in a pesky way to encourage students to focus on their next upcoming assignment instead of spending time on their phone potentially wasting hours of their day.
How we built it
Using MongoDB to host our Backend, ReactJs to present as our front end, and Fast API as a middleware, we were able to achieve a fully functional website that could import and parse calendars. Canvas is often used by most institutions, and homework is often scheduled on these calendars. With this in mind, we created this tool so that students could quickly import their calendar .ics files and generate a to-do list that could remind them of their upcoming assignments. We didn't want this tool to inhibit the current work ethic of a student, so we made sure we could provide as much support towards the student's goals. The site could be opened and left on a separate tab and the student would get notification reminders that would grab their next upcoming assignment without having to actively be viewing the website.
Challenges we ran into
With only 36 hours and a broad frontier of web development, we were automatically thrust into learning through trial by experimenting with setting up a back end and a front end and then connecting the two. With a tool that's specifically used to patch your work ethic, we also ran through countless ideas to help solve and improve the app's mission.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
With a team roster of 2 members participating in their first hackathon, being able to develop a quick and dirty prototype for our backend and front end was extremely satisfying. Many of the smaller implementations that we added became really satisfying as we quickly developed features to make our website better.
What we learned
One of the greatest things we learned from this fast paced hackathon was the importance of minimum viable products and getting at least something out. This kept us motivated to work on the next feature without burning out.
What's next for Starbox
The next step for Starbox would be for the ability to manually input your own work and tasks. Afterwards, Starbox will push for an a phone implementation. This would make the power of notification reminders even more powerful as people would be taking these To-Do lists wherever so it would be even easier to follow your goals.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.