ZotSpace

Ever feel lost in the galaxy of college life? ZotSpace is your all-in-one mission control—built to help UCI students navigate academics, stay organized, and make campus life easier.

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Inspiration

ZotSpace was inspired by the need for a centralized, student-friendly platform tailored to the UCI experience. As students ourselves, we found it inconvenient to juggle multiple platforms like WebReg, DegreeWorks, and the library’s room booking system. More importantly, we realized that many underclassmen and transfer students around us often don’t even know where to access this information in the first place. ZotSpace solves this by merging everything into one intuitive dashboard.

What it does

Upon opening the ZotSpace website, users are greeted with a Login page. They can sign up or log in using their UCI-acquainted email and password. After logging in, they are directed to a comprehensive dashboard designed to simplify and enhance their academic experience.

The dashboard includes the following features:

  • Course Schedule: View upcoming classes and organize your weekly timetable.
  • Course Difficulty: Monitor and visualize workload based on course data.
  • Degree Progress: See which requirements are completed or still needed.
  • To-Do List: Organize personal or academic tasks with an easy interface.
  • Pomodoro Timer: Stay focused and productive with an integrated Pomodoro timer to manage study sessions and breaks.
  • Study Rooms & Groups : Check availability and reserve study spaces in real time. Users can also join existing study rooms or create their own to form a study group.

How we built it

To build ZotSpace, we utilized the following:

  • Languages: JavaScript, Python, CSS, TypeScript, HTML
  • Frameworks/Libraries: React.js, Node.js
  • Platforms: GitHub, Visual Studio Code
  • APIs: UCI Study Room API, Course Info API
  • Databases: Firebase
  • Other Tools: Git, Canva, GoodNotes

Challenges we ran into

We spent a significant amount of time brainstorming and aligning on the project idea. Initially, we started developing a different concept, but midway through, we decided to pivot to ZotSpace after realizing it had more impact and relevance to UCI students. This shift required us to rework our plans and start from scratch.

We also faced issues with the first API we planned to use as it was broken. Additionally, when we began integrating the backend with the frontend, we encountered unexpected behavior and data rendering issues, which required extra debugging and adjustments to our code.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • James: Contributing to the backend development of a tool that will improve the academic and social life of any student at UCI
  • Rylie: Participating in hackathon for the first time (as well as working on a project from scratch) and contributing to the design and development of the frontend dashboard
  • Tim: Contributing to the fullstack development
  • Yurie: Participating in a hackathon for the first time and utilizing frontend to build a dashboard despite having prior experience only in backend development

What we learned

  • How to structure and scale a React project effectively
  • Gained hands-on experience with API integration
  • Learned how to combine frontend and backend components to create a seamless user experience
  • Improved our ability to work as a team and communicate throughout the development process

What's next for ZotSpace

Due to time constraints, we weren’t able to fully connect our backend to the frontend. Some key features still in development include:

  • Degree Progress: Implementing a feature that allows users to select their major and automatically view all corresponding graduation requirements.
  • Study Groups: We plan to fully implement the functionality of the study group feature.
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