Inspiration
We looked upon the past year and viewed all the challenges that we had faced and all the changes that we have made to our studying habits and life to fit into the new state of the world. A few members of our team utilized the Pomodoro technique and had great success with it, but we wanted to create something that exceeded the confines of the academic world. We wanted to create something that was made to ensure that students can remain healthy, safe and feel loved and welcomed in these trying times while serving as a great study tool. We wanted to create a solution for students, made by students.
What it does
What it does: This app serves as both a Pomandoro studying tool, an interactive checklist as well as being a tool to help bring a better balance to the everyday life of the student. The centrepiece of our project is the timer, which is set to 25 minutes, and it is aligned with the recommended Pomandoro studying time. Furthermore, this timer has other capabilities, which include the two different breaks that we have implemented. We understand that while students want to ensure that they are on track for their studies, there are many occurrences that can affect their lives. Therefore we have added a five-minute break as well as a 30-minute break to correspond accordingly. Secondly, the main innovation that we have added is the incorporation of tips after each studying period. With the multiple different tips that we have added, we wanted to ensure that our users were connected to the outside world as well as helping nurture their wellness in these trying times. Lastly, the checklist we have added has five different prompts and while we are going to add more, we have specific animations that correspond to crossing them out, and it is aimed to be a satisfying experience for the competition.
How we built it
We used HTML, CSS, JavaScript for front-end, and then Python and Flask for back-end.
Challenges we ran into
As a group of five, communication and ensuring everyone was on the right page was one of the main problems that we faced constantly throughout our project. While having five individuals may make the work-load appear smaller, in actuality most of our time was spent planning and organizing what each person would do and what part of the code each person actually did. Another main challenge that we faced was incorporating Flask into our project as none of us had prior experience using a Python framework. Much of our time was used to learn what the framework actually did and how we could write our code around this framework so that everyone’s parts and pieces would fit together. One last challenge we faced was learning a new language in CSS. As we had never used this language before, the main issue was transferring our pre-founded knowledge in other languages such as Python and HTML and using that to understand the basis of CSS.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
One of the main accomplishments that we were proud of is the use of front-end and back-end in our project as collectively we had never created a project of this scale. We learned how code from different sources could be effectively utilized into being displayed into the form of a website and found out an effective method in connecting the front and back-end code. Another major accomplishment is the fact that we preserved and utilized our time very effectively, planning out times for breaks and coming back knowing what sections had to be finished and what was already finished. Being in a relatively large group, understanding the importance of communication led to a final product without major errors and one which all of us could be very proud of.
What we learned
We learned how to code in JavaScript and how to style our code; as well as utilizing flask. Alongside that, we earned valuable skills when it comes to collaborating with others when writing code as it can be a cumbersome process at times, and how important it is to ensure steady communications.
What's next for V'Vario's Productivity Timer
- Incorporate better and cleaner looking UI
- Have more functionality (e.g. choose specifically how long you want your timer to be, a customizable checklist)
- Implement a more complex checklist that is able to remember and track a user's to-do list for the week using a database
- Add sound as notifications for when the timer is over
- Create a more dynamic break tip system that could provide the user with specific break tips depending on their preferred way to cooldown (e.g. if they like to exercise or if they like to play an instrument it'll recommend them to do so)
- Congratulations screen/reward for completing all tasks on checklist
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