Focus Cat

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Inspiration

We got inspiration from timer apps in our personal lives and we thought that creating an app which forces you to be productive for a set amount of time would benefit us and others to develop good work habits. We were also inspired by a cat and thought it would be a great idea to traumatize children into being productive. Some of our members are procrastinators and we thought it would be beneficial.

What it does

Focus Cat is an app that encourages productivity by forcing the user to be productive for a set amount of time each day in order to keep a cat alive. There are many rewards in the form of customizations if the user meets their daily focus goal, or takes care of their cat, such as stripes, colours, and patterns. On the other hand, if the user neglects the cat, the cat will become sad, then sick, then will die brutally.

How we built it

We started by brainstorming ideas for an app, and when we came up with the idea of Focus Cat, we started to code it in Java. We used Java Swing to create the app, which needed an understanding of object-oriented programming and graphical user interface development. We also watched and read tutorials online to gain a better understanding of our code, including concepts like threads and timers.

Challenges we ran into

A challenge we ran into was making the timer function properly. The GUI does not change a label in a loop, so we had to learn how to properly create a timer in a GUI. We also ran into the challenge of combining the code because one member used Netbeans and the other member used IntelliJ. In addition, we ran into the challenge of not being able to complete all of our ideas within the given time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

An accomplishment we are proud of is drawing the cat and making many customizations for it. We are very proud that our code works as we planned. In addition, we are proud of overcoming the challenge of keeping track of time. We also feel accomplished that we have successfully written over one thousand lines of code, to bring our project closer to completion within the time limit of sixty hours.

What we learned

We learned that taking care of a cat is a great incentive to force people to be productive. We also learned how to use Photoshop to change the colour and the designs on the cat. One of our members learned new rules of coding in Java, including that GUI's do not work the same way in loops. We learned that creating an app takes a long time, and we should not neglect sleep as sleep is important.

What's next for Focus Cat

We can continue to add more details to the app. For example, we could add some more customizations to the cat's appearance, more ways for the cat to die, notifications, and animations for the cat's death. We could also implement a point or coin system where the user is required to gain a certain amount of points/coins to buy a type of cat or customization. We could also debug the app to make it work better.