PolyPal

Learn languages with PolyPal! Chat with an AI cat-themed language tutor, earn points for practice, and customize your cat avatar. It's fun, interactive, and purr-fect for mastering new languages!

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PolyPal: The Purr-fect Language Learning App

Inspiration

Many of our team members love learning languages but often struggle to stay motivated. We wanted to create a fun, engaging platform to help users study languages in an interactive way. Plus, we’re all cat lovers, so naturally, we had to incorporate a playful cat persona to make the experience even more enjoyable!

What It Does

  • Interactive Learning: Practice real conversations with an AI chatbot that adapts to your language level, complete with witty, pesky humor that makes every chat entertaining and delightful.
  • Multilingual Support: Learn in any of 7 supported languages, ranging from Spanish to Chinese.
  • Note-Taking: Take notes during each language lesson, and log in anytime to review and build upon your past notes.
  • Rewarding Progress: Earn points for language learning efforts and use them to buy adorable items to decorate your cat avatar and profile, making learning both productive and fun!

What We Learned

  • Gained deeper knowledge of Next.js, implementing complex features like a chat screen and a database/inventory system.
  • Developed skills in designing and managing a complex inventory and database system.
  • Explored AWS DynamoDB and AWS Bedrock for the first time, which gave us a solid foundation in cloud services.
  • Learned the importance of teamwork, especially when navigating different time zones and busy schedules.

How We Built Our Project

  • Frontend: Built using Next.js for the application logic and Tailwind CSS and Lottie for dynamic fun cat animations and responsive designs.
  • View the Art Assets used in our project: link
  • Backend: Powered by various AWS services:
    • DynamoDB: noSQL database to store user notes, store inventory, purchases, and equipped profile items.
    • Bedrock: To integrate the AI cat persona for interactive chats.
    • S3: For storing media assets like user avatars and profile items.
    • Polly: To provide text-to-speech capabilities for pronunciation assistance.
    • qDeveloper: For debugging and monitoring the application.

Challenges

  • Navigating AWS services as first-time users required significant learning and troubleshooting.
  • Designing a flexible yet efficient database to handle user notes, inventory management, and customizations was challenging but rewarding.
  • Managing teamwork with teammates in different time zones and balancing our schedules made collaboration more complex but taught us valuable time management skills.

What's Next for PolyPal

  • User Profiles in the Navbar: Load saved profiles directly to the navigation bar
  • Room Customizer & Shop: Users can buy furniture, decorations, and other items to customize their cat’s virtual room.

We’re proud of how we overcame these hurdles to deliver a fun, interactive language learning app that blends AI technology with a touch of feline charm!

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