Calendate

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  First Part of Web App

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  Second Part of Web App

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  Third Part of Web App

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  Resulting Calendar

Inspiration

Us as a team found that over the pandemic and constant lockdowns, it was very easy for people, especially young people, to lose motivation and develop mental health issues. In fact, the CDC reported that the pandemic has directly caused over 1 in 4 youth to contemplate suicide over its duration up until now. Being young ourselves, we have witnessed this impact firsthand - many people that we know have been affected, and we're sure that everyone knows a person who's been negatively impacted by the current unfortunate situation. When brainstorming, we began to realize that there was a slight pattern - people would become unmotivated, which would then slowly spiral into deeper loss of purpose and ultimately self-destruction in some cases. Thus, we aimed to create something that would allow people to at least realize that there is a purpose to life and to encourage people to organize their own lives.

What it does

Calendate is a web app that essentially presents an interactive quiz for the user on their interests and personal lives, and then uses the generated user input to directly edit and update the user's google calendar. Calendate also automatically sets reminders for events, and decides things such as recommended sleep time based on user-specific information such as age and education level.

How we built it

Google api, specifically google calendar API, was used to connect our app to the user's google account. We used node.js to create the back-end, and React to create the front-end. When a user allows Calendate to edit their calendar, google calendar API allows the program to make direct requests to update the user's google calendar.

Challenges we ran into

Since we were all unfamiliar with front-end development, we had to begin learning through workshops, online tutorials, and documentations. We learned javascript and react from scratch, from the initial setup to the computer to the structuring of the files. In the planning process, we were often skeptical of the generated ideas as we did not have the previous experiences to estimate the feasibility of completing the project in the given 36 hours.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Given the constraints of the event, we were satisfied as we saw our ideas come into fruition over the hackathon. We were proud that during our initial planning phase, we realized our limitations and capabilities to come up with an idea that was doable. It was amazing to see our group manage our time well to reach our end goal without having to deviate from our initial plan. We are also proud that we attempted to tackle the issue of mental health for youth, as it is an issue that makes direct impact on our own lives.

What we learned

We created and deployed both front-end and back-end segments of a project for the first time. We also learned how to use Google API. Furthermore, we all learned of the importance of being flexible and working as a real team - as we were all inexperienced, we constantly helped each other out with learning new skills and solving difficult issues.

What's next for Calendate

Our ultimate goal for Calendate is for it to become a fun interactive quiz that users can use to begin their journey to scheduling their time and learning of new activities that would interest them. We hope to add features that utilize additional user input in order to make possible recommendations on activities that users would likely enjoy. We would also like to add a feature that automatically adds events onto google calendar for users by scanning for ideal free time.

Built With

• google
• javascript
• node.js
• react