Sylla-snap

Why manually input assignment reminders when you can get it in a snap?

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Inspiration

The beginning of the semester is such an exciting time! However, as any student knows, it can be a meticulous and time-consuming task to plug all of one's assignments into a Google Calendar. If only there were some way to make it easier.

What it does

Sylla-snap is an android app that utilizes the Google Cloud Vision API. Given a photo of a syllabus, it uses Optical Character Recognition to determine due dates and corresponding assignment titles. It creates events for each assignment and syncs them into the user's Google Calendar. Taking in the information from Google Calendar, it also creates a visualization of your workload per week, so you can know ahead of time when you'll be busier than usual.

How we built it

We built the app in Android Studio. We took the four main functions and initially split up the work, debugging with each other as we went on. We constantly pushed and pulled from GitHub to make sure we had up to date code that worked well with everyone else's. We used Google Cloud Vision API to read the document; we used a natural language processor to retrieve information from the document; we worked with Google Calendar to insert the events into one's calendar. To help further aid college students, we used the Microstrategy API to help visualize the weekly workload - showing the number of events per week of the year. We, with our prior knowledge and research, created the foundation of an app that could improve college students' productivity.

Challenges we ran into

As a beginner team, there were many things that we did not know; a majority of us do not have experience with apps in general, let alone Android apps. We had to rely on a lot of on the fly learning and debugging. The Google Authorization was a confusing format at first, but after talking to the Google Cloud representative, we learned more about the process and were able to work through. After getting the authorization, an important part of the app is getting dates and events. Many dates and events can be in different formats and we're still working on analyzing all of them. We, also as a team with little to none JavaScript and Android Studio experience, struggled with using WebView in our app to show off the Microstrategy dossier, but thanks to the great team, we worked through our problem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

When the user first opens the app, they see a sleek design that introduces our app. UX/UI design is a strong point for this team. The colors contrast greatly, allowing for a beautiful and capturing look. Throughout the app, where to click is very apparent and we keep a constant theme throughout. We also worked great as a team. There was smooth integration at the end and no frustration due to lacking teammates or endless coding bugs. For less than 24 hours, we have a well-working app despite our underestimation of the challenge of text processing. With all three put together, we as a team feel confident in our app.

What we learned

We learned how hard text processing truly is. As humans, we underestimate the work of a brain and how much we do to register the things in our day to day lives. This app opened our eyes to the innovation and struggles of text processing. We learned how well collaboration can work and how we can help each other debug our code to create one cohesive piece. For the beginners in the group, we learned an introduction to Android Studio and APIs and how they can help in our coding adventures.

What's next for Sylla-snap

For Sylla-snap, we want to further develop the text processing features to read more flexible syllabi. Due to the time constraint, our app assumes things to simplify the challenge of text parsing. If we had more time and resources, this would be a great application to continue. Sylla-snap has a great amount of potential as college students are expected to be involved in more and more extracurriculars and Sylla-snap can show them when they're most busy so they can prepare. Sylla-snap would be an app that revolutionizes how college students tackle their everyday lives and maximize their productivity to achieve their potential.

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