SaltedFishCoffee

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, UC Merced has resorted to online classes. To help students organize their schedules and make the best use of their days, we have developed a planner website.

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Inspiration

During the beginning stages of the hackathon, we thought about which topic would suit us and was the most relevant to university students. After a while, we decided on a school planner application that would help organize a student’s schedule to help those who are having a difficult time coping with online schooling. We wanted to help the University of California, Merced, students and branch out to other universities. We understood how hard it was being isolated from other students and losing track of time being inside all of the time. The longer people stay inside, the fewer motivation people can have to work on mundane work, causing them to act like salted fish, which is a metaphor for people who have no intention of doing anything. Therefore, like how coffee gives the motivation to survive throughout the day, our SaltedFishCoffee project strives to help students in keeping track of their schedules so they aren’t swarmed by work because of procrastination.

What it does

Our website contains seven sticky note-like spaces for each day of the week to place events. The user can add a new note by clicking on “Add Event” and filling out the popup.

How we built it

We coded the website on Visual Studio Code using the React and Node.js development tools. We used Javascript, CSS, and HTML for the front end portion and some SQL for the database portion. Some modules and libraries we used included webpack and bootstrap.

Challenges we ran into

We found it difficult to communicate online without ever meeting each other face-to-face. Either one of us could randomly go offline for hours with no feedback on the project. Installing the dependencies and running the programs would take a long time and we couldn't do much in the beginning. Furthermore, we didn’t know each other’s progress and often overwrote each other’s work on GitHub. Despite everything, we were able to complete the project through sheer persistence and effort.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of finishing the project despite being from the opposite side of the country and with limited hands and time to work on it.

What we learned

We learned how to use webpack and to drag and drop objects in React. Furthermore, we gained experience in working on the first online HackMerced without ever meeting each other or talking outside of chatting through text.

What's next for SaltedFishCoffee

There were several implementations we planned for but didn’t have time to complete. The backend code could have been finished if given another day and we wanted to add more buttons to scroll between different weeks and dates. In the future, if given time, we would complete the website and try to convert it into an easy-to-use mobile app or computer extension.

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