FocusBuddy

first logo
mini logo
improved logic
old logic

Inspiration

The Overhead Whiffers is composed of three highschoolers. We are constantly told by teachers to not procrastinate on work, but like most highschoolers, we still procrastinate. With the idea of procrastination in mind, we wanted to create a project that would not only look good for HackVH, but would also benefit us and our fellow highschoolers.

What it does

FocusBuddy allows users to manage their time efficiently and productively, the user is allowed to create a list of activities they need to accomplish. There will be a timer which keeps track of time spent on activity. At the end, there is a survey for any distractions that may be encountered.

How we built it

We first started by drawing out a rough draft of the logic of the program in a whiteboard app. We then started transferring it into Java. The rest is pretty much self-explanatory, as everything else is completed in Java. Unfortunately, this did not utilize many new apis as we weren’t very fluent in languages that really relied on apis.

Challenges we ran into

There were many challenges that we ran into while producing FocusBuddy. Darren and Rohan ran into many problems with recording, and Dennis ran into many coding errors during the early stages of our project. The main challenge during videotaping was voice recognition. Although the video recorder was screen recording, Darren and Rohan’s mics weren’t being taken into account while the film was running. Another challenge we faced occured in the beginning, when we hadn't fully devised out our plan yet and had to start working without a completed plan.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First of all, it’s our teammate, Rohan’s first hackathon, so we were very proud of his contribution to the organization of our project and the amount of effort he spent on the video with Darren. In the coding aspects, even though there are still some bugs, we were most proud of our local data storage system that stored the user info onto a file when the user decides to exit the program.

What we learned

We learned to collaborate and split up the workload between the members. We have also learned to start preparing earlier as we ran out of time to prepare when the hackathon started and had to work based off of unorganized thoughts.

What's next for FocusBuddy

We plan to possibly implement this program into other languages that support a better user interface. We may also share this with friends that may need some help with their time management.