Quest Log

Quest Log brings ARG elements to the casual audience. Whether you're across the ocean or in your backyard, Quest Log helps you explore with exclusive discounts, destinations, and rewards.

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Inspiration

While everyone wants to explore and live a fulfilling life, it can often be difficult to find either the destination or the motivation to do so. Especially in an area you are not familiar with, finding the best restaurants, activities, destinations, and local gems is a time-intensive process, often reliant on luck or work of mouth. In videogames, there are often mini-maps and quest objectives that guide the player’s exploration and rewards them for doing so. Moreover, ARG games are becoming increasingly mainstream, gamifying everyday life and encouraging a format that enhances IRL experiences rather than replacing them. We asked ourselves, “What if we had a quest log for everyday life?” Now, the ultimate tour guide is right in your pocket!

What it does

Quest Log is an app that recommends different curated “quest lines” in your area based on your interests and past experiences. Quest lines can be activities such as “hiking 2 different trails in one month” or “visiting 3 local coffee shops.” For doing quests, you can level up your skills to earn bigger rewards or earn individual rewards per quest. The app can incorporate real-world elements like scanning a QR code, that is set up by rewarded voluntary contributors worldwide, or by businesses who print barcodes on their receipts. Otherwise, it simply verifies completion through location data. Businesses can advertise their venue by offering coupons to users who take on their quests, or by offering their products as rewards for completing certain quests. Essentially, our application is a reward system and guide for users exploring and navigating communities around the world. Exploration is the key concept, integrated with brand deals and real-world or digital rewards.

How we built it

We used JavaFX in Java to create our application prototype, which we could later host on a server so that it's accessible by a website, or potentially a mobile app. Using Github, our team was able to collaborate with effective version control. A history of our commits can be seen in our project repository. We utilized Figma to make a graphical prototype, which has animations, layouts, and vector graphics. All in all, we used JavaFX elements and images generated in our Figma mockup to create an alpha version, which demonstrates the project idea and execution, without as much of the technical backend required. We used JavaFX in Java to create our application prototype, which we could later on the host on a server so that it's accessible by a website, or potentially an app. Using Github, our team was able to collaborate with effective version control. A history of our commits can be seen in our project repository. We utilized Figma to make a graphical prototype, which has animations, layouts, and vector graphics. All in all, we used JavaFX elements and images generated in our Figma mockup to create an alpha version, which demonstrates the project idea and execution without as much of the technical backend required.

Marketability and Community Impact

The Quest Log app helps put small businesses on the map in a big way! We commit to prioritizing local gems and lesser-known destinations to ensure tourists and locals alike can support small and minority-owned businesses in their area. The ability to provide coupons or exclusive deals means we can partner with brands or allow them to register with our service to bring business to their door while providing savings for our users. Moreover, this means that businesses who struggle to find success on social media or other marketing means have an immediate avenue to an adventurous audience. While we offer discounts to small businesses, any business can register a quest with us to promote their storefront or event and link to their brand content, making it an all-in-one marketing tool for any experience.

Quest Log also knows that the most heroic quest lines involve helping others. Like the heroes from the video games from which its conceptualized, Quest Log users can become heroes within their own communities through community service quest lines. Quest Log has the perfect implementation to register local charity events and broadcast them to a wide audience, and Quest Log commits to highlighting and promoting these events free of charge. While no one needs a reward to do good deeds, quest log’s rewards system allows its users to keep a sentimental digital token of their donated time or a convenient way to log their community service. Hero Badges, achieved through completing community service, are considered the highest honor and highest XP badges that Quest Log has to offer. All in all, Quest Log wants to help people become more involved in their communities and help tourists and locals support small businesses.

What we learned

As a team, we learned the value of a simple concept and its potential complexity. It can be easy to overcomplicate things to a point that they become convoluted and lose some of their original value.

Our team members grew more confident in their skills regarding Figma, Java, JavaFX, git, and Github.

What's next for Quest Log

In future iterations of our project, we’d start by adding a more interactive UI within the Java application. With this, we’d then extend our platform to include a website and mobile app, which would allow for more features to be possible. Our team would redo our quest and task recommendation system, better combining it with the rest of our systems. We would include a maps API where we can place pins in order to better communicate to the user where their next quest is. We’d add better detection for the quests so that triggers like arriving at a location or scanning a QR code can be detected and the proper amount of score added. Beyond the technical improvements, we would reach out to businesses who would want to advertise their venue or service via a quest or task, or who’d like to offer their products as rewards.

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