Study Buddy

Inspiration

As students, we struggle to study and stay motivated and wanted to build an application that would cater to every students needs. Of course, we couldn't implement many of the tools we wanted too, however, we included some of the things we wish were on the study applications we've used in the past. Some of these are a music within the site we are using, a tutor/helper assistant bot, study techniques based on our learning preferences, and a to-do list.

What it does

Our website has pages which include: built in timers based on various study techniques(Pomodoro, Interleaving, etc), a to-do list accessible on each page, music connected to Spotify so you don't have to navigate to a separate tab or use another device, and an artificial intelligence tool to answer basic questions and guide the user on their study journey.

How we built it

We built the code on VS Code, using JavaScript, CSS, Python, and TypeScript. We used React for the front end, Flask for back end, and MongoDB for the database holding username and passwords for login. We pushed all our changes to Github where we would share our work and tweak it together.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was combining all of our code as we had very little prep time in addition to little to no prior knowledge of GitHub. Since we are beginners, we only learned to navigate the basics of GitHub during this hackathon. Our GitHub is still slightly unorganized due to this. Additionally, the database was difficult to connect and route to our final website. In fact, it initially did not work so we had to restart the entire process from scratch. Other difficulties included formatting the site so that it was user-friendly, easy to use, and fit a certain theme. Lastly, being our first hackathon, a few of us found it difficult to get proper rest. Despite us taking turns, our drive to work and motivation wore us down.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud of connecting our entire project together. The website, database, music integration, AI robot, and timers were all created separately which made it difficult to combine. However, with our combined efforts, we were to successfully add each tool to the site, making it our greatest accomplishment in this hackathon. We are also proud of our user interface design as it is handrawn and designed meticulously from spacing to font.

What we learned

We learned the basics of GitHub, version control, and explored the many features that Flask, the React App, and Node.js offers.

What's next for Study Buddy

In the future, we are hoping to upgrade Study Buddy to have interactible study rooms where students can hop into a room of fellow students taking a similar class. We also hope to have a Tinder-style website where students can find study buddies.