Cloudy

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Inspiration

College students often struggle to find focused and supportive study environments. Studying alone can feel isolating, while coordinating physical group study sessions is difficult. Initially, we explored a one-to-one random matching study space inspired by platforms like ZEP and Omegle. However, after several brainstorming and discussion sessions, we shifted our focus toward subject-based study groups to better address real student needs.

What it does

Cloudy is a web platform designed to help college students find flexible, low-pressure study spaces. Instead of forcing random matching, Cloudy allows users to join or create virtual study rooms based on shared subjects and learning goals. This helps students stay focused while also maintaining a sense of accountability and community.

How we built it

We built Cloudy as a full-stack web prototype using React for the frontend and Node.js with Socket.IO for real-time communication. The user interface focuses on a calm, cloud-themed aesthetic, incorporating soft gradients and hand-drawn animal-style avatars to create a friendly and low-pressure study atmosphere.

Key features include:

Live group study session
Customizable avatar creation
Preference-based user profile setup
Study lobby for browsing and hosting rooms
Pomodoro-style focus timer
Group text chat
Productivity tracking through study history and session statistics

Challenges we ran into

At the beginning, the problem we were trying to solve was not clearly defined. Through multiple iterations of brainstorming, we redesigned the core feature from random matching to subject-focused study groups.

Our team also faced technical challenges due to limited hackathon experience. Only one member had prior backend development knowledge, which required us to learn real-time communication architecture and collaborative development workflows quickly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of transforming an initial idea into a working prototype within a limited time frame. The most challenging and meaningful part of the project was the redesign process, where we refined our product direction to better align with student needs.

What we learned

This project taught us that teamwork is essential in hackathon environments. We also gained experience in building real-time web applications and integrating frontend interfaces with backend communication systems.