Collability

Inspiration

As students ourselves, we noticed how hard it is to stay motivated while studying alone. Existing productivity apps either felt isolating or lacked interactive, multiplayer features. We wanted to create a platform that blends focused studying with collaborative tools -- inspired by gamification (like Duolingo) as well as note-taking (like Notability).

What it does

Collability is an all-in-one gamified customizable study buddy including:

Study timer: Set multiple, distinct timers at once, with a changeable name and duration
Collaborative whiteboard: Brainstorm, take notes, or solve problems in real time with classmates
Calendar: Keep track of your exam dates and sync assignment deadlines
Daily commissions: Complete mini tasks (for example, study for 1 hour) to earn exp and eventually unlock new avatar customizations

How we built it

We used React for the different components
We used MongoDB for the database
We used Express, Axios and Cors to ensure backend-frontend connection
We used Bcrypt to hash user passwords
Websocket and Node.js

Challenges we ran into

Everything
We had to learn how to use React in under 24 hours
The calendar (we tried using Google Calendar API but we didn’t manage to integrate it to React)
Accessing data with MongoDB

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to make a slightly functioning web app
We got some sleep!

What we learned

How to use React
We familiarized ourselves more with GitHub
MongoDB

What's next for Collability

Add more features to the calendar
Keep track of the amount studied per subject and possibly create a leaderboard to compete with friends
AI practice questions, summaries, and flashcards generator to help with studying
Public and private chat rooms for studying included with the whiteboard