Independent Queens

Inspiration

Our project was inspired by the need for an all-in-one women-centric application that addresses multiple aspects of daily life specific to women. We recognized that while there are many apps for scheduling, health tracking, or community building, there wasn't a combined, single platform that has all these features while considering women's unique needs, particularly with menstrual health and community support.

What it does

Independent Queens is an overarching women empowerment platform with four main features:

Personalized scheduler that integrates Canvas assignments, events, and menstrual cycle tracking in order to provide optimized scheduling recommendations for activities and exercise based on different menstrual phases.
A digital journal that helps track emotional well-being with sentiment analysis and provides insights into mood patterns over time.
An explore page for networking and community building where women can discover others with shared interests and academic backgrounds.
A points-based skill exchange system that fosters knowledge sharing and community support through a service marketplace.
We have a gift card redeem system, that empowers women to share and grow.
We use Generative AI, Machine Learning to perform different features of the application. Each feature such as diet recommendations, plan scheduling, exercise scheduling and journaling which use different aspects of AI/ML to power the application.

How we built it

Frontend: React with TypeScript for type safety, Tailwind CSS For responsive styling. Backend: MongoDB for our database to store user profiles, journal entries, and scheduling data. Additional Technologies:

Canvas API integration for assignment data
Machine Learning for emotional analysis and insights of journal entries -Calendar parsing for .ICS files
JavaScript for core functionality
Using Docker to seamlessly deploy the backend using image to AWS Lambda
Using AWS services such as Cognito to authenticate the user securely.
Using LangChain to use AI services and streamline the project

Challenges we ran into

Complex feature integration: combining multiple data sources into a a cohesive scheduling system.
Scope management: Balancing our ambitious feature set with the hackathon time constraints required careful prioritization
Data synchronization: Ensuring accurate integration of menstrual cycle data with schedule recommendations and activity planning.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Developing a community-driven platform that encourages skill sharing and mutual support
Implementing the emotional analysis for emotional well-being tracking
Creating an intuitive UI that makes complex features accessible
Develop a multi-feature application in a short time by proper planning and implementation

What we learned

The importance of feature integration and cohesion for best user experience
The value of considering women's health factors in productivity planning
project management and scope control

What's next for Independent Queens

Expand the menstrual cycle tracking features to include more health insights and recommendations.
Enhance the ML capabilities
Implement additional community features
Develop mobile applications for better accessibility.