Green Remind

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Inspiration

Many people care about global issues like climate change, but in everyday life, they often forget to take small actions that actually make a difference, like turning off lights, saving water, or bringing reusable items. This gap between awareness and action is where change is lost. We wanted to solve that by creating a tool that nudges users at the right moments, helping them turn simple actions into lasting sustainable habits.

What it does

Sustain Reminder is a smart reminder app that helps users build sustainable habits through daily nudges. Users can set or choose eco-friendly tasks, such as bringing a reusable bottle or turning off unused lights and receive timely reminders to complete them. To keep users engaged, the app includes a streak system, where completing tasks consistently builds daily streaks. In addition, users are rewarded with streak pets, virtual companions that grow and evolve as users maintain their habits. If users stay consistent, their pet becomes healthier and happier, but missing tasks may cause the streak to reset, encouraging accountability. The app also provides simple impact feedback, helping users see how their small actions contribute to a bigger environmental impact.

How we built it

We built Sustain Reminder using Visual Studio Code and Codex to speed up development. We focused on creating a simple and clean interface where users can easily add tasks, receive reminders, track their streaks, and interact with their virtual pets. We implemented basic reminder logic, task management, and a streak tracking system, along with simple animations to bring the streak pets to life. These interactive elements make the experience more engaging and motivate users to stay consistent with their sustainable habits.

Challenges we ran into

At the beginning, we struggled with where to start and how to structure the app, since we were new to building a full project from scratch. Breaking the idea into smaller features helped us move forward step by step. We also faced challenges in implementing reminders and keeping the app simple while still making it meaningful. Using Codex helped us overcome these challenges by assisting with writing code, debugging issues, and suggesting solutions quickly, allowing us to focus more on the idea and user experience instead of getting stuck on technical problems.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we successfully turned a simple idea into a working product within a limited time. We also added small animations and thoughtful details that make the app more engaging, not just functional.

What we learned

As this was our first time participating in a hackathon, we’re especially proud that we were able to turn a simple idea into a working product within a limited time. Despite having little prior experience, we successfully built a functional app with core features like reminders, streaks, and interactive elements such as streak pets. We also added small animations and thoughtful details that make the app more engaging, not just functional. This experience showed us that we can quickly learn, adapt, and collaborate effectively under time pressure.

What's next for Sustain Reminder

In the future, we plan to integrate AI to better understand and measure the impact of reminders on user behavior. By analyzing which reminders users respond to most, how often they complete tasks, and which habits they maintain over time, the app could provide smarter and more personalized nudges. This would help us not only remind users more effectively, but also identify which reminders actually lead to meaningful sustainable actions. We also want to expand the impact tracking system, improve the design, add more interactive features, and continue refining the overall user experience.