Productivity Pal

• 

  Alien Pal, one of the choices available.

Inspiration

During the brainstorming session in our group, as we discussed problems in our day-to-day lives one issue we all shared was that of time management and efficient studying. As a group of avid gamers we were all too familiar with spending hours of gaming consecutively, and so we wanted to create a way to gamify studying, in hopes of improving our ability to study efficiently, and for extended periods of time.

What it does

Our project is a website that allows users wishing to study to create a pal, who slowly hatches and grows as you study. Based on the Pomodoro time-management method, the program sets 4 intervals of 25 minutes of studying for the user, separated by 5 minute breaks, with the pal growing after each work interval. Should you quit studying partway through, the pet will pass away, losing all your effort to raise it.

How we built it

We began the project by brainstorming the requirements the project had to complete, and researching ways to execute our ideas. This project was built using React.js, a first for all our team members.

Challenges we ran into

One of our original visions for this project was to allow groups of users to all show off their pets together, however we soon realized the difficulty of a project involving interactions with between a server and many clients, which we had little experience and no plan to tackle effectively. Realizing that the minimum viable product for our project was simply a way for users to improve their efficiency and time management abilities, we chose to design it for only one user at a time, so we could move past this issue beyond our technical abilities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Given this was our first hackathon, and some of the first coding experience for one of our team members, being able to execute our project an amazing experience for us.

What we learned

None of our group members had experience using React.js, save for the activities done on learn day, so we had chosen to use React to maximize the learning we received from this event. This involved us learning to implement some of our previous experience with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with React and Node.js. While React was a technically challenging skill we had to learn, an unexpected soft skill we developed through this project was that of efficient teamwork and product management. As we began working, we gained knowledge on the strengths of each individual team member, and divvied up the work as appropriate so we could make the best possible project within our time.

What's next for Productivity Pal

Productivity Pal has been an exercise in CSS and React.js, and we hope to extend our knowledge in these areas with the addition of new pets, refining the existing graphics, and as an extra challenge attempting to create multiplayer functionality.

Built With

• node.js
• react.js