PopIQ

🧠 Inspiration

In a world of infinite scroll and information overload, we asked ourselves: what if learning something new every day didn't feel like homework?

We built Pop IQ for students, curious minds, and anyone who wants to grow smarter — without the overwhelm. The idea was simple: one fact. One pop. Every day. That's it.

We were inspired by the way widgets like weather or news headlines live quietly on your home screen — always there, never demanding. We thought: why can't learning feel like that?

🔨 How We Built It

Pop IQ is a mobile app with a home screen widget integration. Here's how it works under the hood:

• Fact curation – We built a fact database organised by category (science, history, culture, mathematics, and more), with each fact verified for accuracy before being added.
• Customisable delivery – Users choose how many facts they want per day (1, 2, or more) and when they want them — no algorithm, no feed, just their chosen dose of knowledge.
• Widget-first design – The home screen widget was built as a core feature, not an afterthought, so facts are always one glance away.
• Minimal UI – We deliberately kept the interface clean and distraction-free, because the point is the fact, not the app.

📚 What We Learned

• How to build and deploy a native widget that updates dynamically
• The importance of UX restraint — more features aren't always better
• How to fact-check and write facts clearly for a general audience
• How to scope a project tightly for a hackathon timeline

⚡ Challenges We Faced

• Widget limitations — Home screen widgets have strict constraints on interactivity and update frequency depending on the platform, which required creative workarounds.
• Fact quality control – It's surprisingly hard to write a fact that is accurate, interesting, and short enough to fit on a widget. We went through many rounds of editing.
• Avoiding information overload while building an information app – The irony wasn't lost on us. Every design decision had to fight the urge to add just one more thing.

Built With

• ai
• javascript