Chores Made Easy

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  Samples of Rewards

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Inspiration

The inspiration started with single parents with children. They spend a great deal of time trying to manage the family, career, finances, and all aspects of their own life, and that of their children. The concept was a way to help them manage the tasks at home, while also providing a way for the children to be more interactive. Doing chores is never fun, but when there is some kind of a reward to it it certainly helps.

As we discussed the project, we realized that this could expand to include larger families going so far as to include whole communities. It could also be used by a single individual to self motivate.

The result was something that could help small communities become even closer and larger organizations develop that community feeling well all cherish.

What it does

Our project allows a parent, or primary user, the ability to invite children, or sub users.

The parent can create projects and within those projects, chores. They are able to assign a reward to the chores and also the projects, if desired. The projects are the larger buckets that may or may not be completed. The chores are the individual tasks to be done. Examples would be, House or Yard. Within House you could have laundry, clean dishes, etc.

The children, or sub users, select which chore they wish to do. They would mark it completed when done. They would also be able to note if there is a reward they would really like. This allows the parent to set a chore, or even project, scaled based on the reward desired. For example, $1 for emptying the dishwasher, $20 for doing the stack of laundry to include folding and putting it away.

When the chore is completed, it sends an sms or email message to the parent to let them know it was done. The child can either claim the reward right away, or hold off until a later date. Since the rewards can be anything the parent can imagine, we did not intend functionality into the project to provide them when claimed. Instead, the parent would provide the reward based on what it is. An example would be, the reward of going to McDonald's for a happy meal.

At the end of the year, or project, the parent can select the option to look at all the projects, and their chores, which were completed over the prior year. They can see who performed them and if there are any outstanding rewards to be claimed.

How we built it

When we discussed this, we looked at the different sponsor challenges that were available. Our initial thought was to use React, Express, Knex, and a free db on ElephantSQL with PostgreSQL. We then saw that Wix had a challenge to use Velo, so we opted to see if we could build it with that.

The core is built using the Velo by Wix. We used the web development portion, along with their database to build the entire project. We also added in the Twilio for the sms and email messaging for alerts.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge is that Velo does not allow multi-developers. If we had used our original build concept, we would have been able to split the work more. It also did require learning the way Velo by Wix does their JavaScript as it uses their custom programming.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our biggest accomplishment is coming up with something we all believed in. At first glance it seems like it is just a task list program of which there are a multitude. We were able to look beyond a small amount of functionality and think of ways to expand it and improve on our original concept. We took it from a single parent with kids to an individual who can self task and even further to an entire community prepping their annual Fourth of July festival.

We came to the hackathon prepared to use the tools we had learned but stepped out of our comfort zone and went into the unknown.

What we learned

It is okay when things don't meet your expectations initially. Sometimes it takes just a little bit more digging and working as a team to make things happen.

What's next for Chores Made Easy

The next step for the project is to expand it so that it can include email notifications for those who prefer email over sms. We also want to add in the ability to have multiple parents and ownership for each project.

Built With

• databases
• javascript
• sms
• twilio
• velo
• wix