Inspiration
When Raj asked Alex at the beginning of the Hackathon how he could improve his French speaking skills, Alex reflected on that question. A few years ago, Alex participated in the 'Explore' program at Montreal, an initiative to increase French literacy in Canada through facilitated conversations with classmates and locals. From that experience, Alex realized the power that real time interactions have on language fluency far outweigh the benefits of classroom learning and online tutorials. He shared his insights with Raj and Ayesha, and thus LangWhiz was born.
What it does
LangWhiz is a web application designed to help people to not just learn a language, but actually speak it fluently through conversational methods and relationship building with native speakers. Using a matching algorithm, LangWhiz connects two people learning each other's native language at approximately the same skill level. Through learning modules that are divided by conversational lesson topics, 2 people are paired randomly via AppearIn video chat at the end of the session to practice what they've just learned through guided questions.
How I built it
We broke up into two teams: front end and backend. Through the backend, we created a method for users to connect to each other using PHP and the Appear.In API. Matching is made according to their native language and the language they hope to learn. Once the learning modules per level are completed, they are matched up with another active user who complements their language choices. Front-end development involved using PhpStorm, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Bootstrap to finalize the layout and UI design of the website. Several use cases were considered and many webpage components were designed from scratch.
Challenges I ran into
We tried to optimize the UX while maintaining high performance in our functional abilities. Setting up the backend with the correct parameter variables was a challenge, and caused us to at times have a sub optimal matching algorithm. However, by improving the quality of the algorithm, these issues were optimized.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
The UI design and front end experience for users makes our web application stand out from the crowd. Further, we are proud of our module design and relative simplicity compared with similar products. We are very proud of our idea, because it is a product we could see ourselves using, and is a sustainable service that doesn't cost users a cent.
What I learned
As a first time hacker, Ayesha learned a lot from the languages that Raj and Alex introduced to her. Raj learned how to overcome key challenges in setting up the PHP functions that controlled the login page. Alex learned how to set up a chat client using a socket.io and gained significant exposure to backend development, along with reinforcing his front-end skills.
What's next for Langwhiz
We want to attract users to enhance the performance and potential of our webapp. We also want to add new learning modules and diversity our demographic to cater to a universal crowd.
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