Inspiration
As tired, procrastinating and sometimes lazy students ourselves, we found that we often struggled with motivating ourselves to actually do assignments. However, something that did motivate us was cute animals, studying tools and friends. Unfortunately, because of the pandemic, we have very little of the latter so our only hope of actually passing school was with the aid of a cute virtual pet and some useful virtual tools. We wanted to make this website for, not only ourselves, but any other poor souls who are in need of motivation. The features we added to this site were all meant to boost productivity for the user as well as still being fun to interact with. For us, and for many others, music and white noise is very helpful for staying focused, as well as having a stopwatch to keep track of time and a to-do list to use easily on hand - which is why we implemented these features onto the site.
What it does
The website has four main features, a to-do list, music and ambience picker, and a stopwatch. The features, and the site as a whole are mainly all themed, with dog bones, a dog house, food and water bowls and a bright and cheery background to add to the themed feel of the site. As well, there is the main pet in the center of the website, a corgi (because who doesn’t love corgis) who keeps watch over you as you work, a doghouse which displays the name that the user wishes to name the pet and a bonus easter egg hidden somewhere on the site. All of the features are simple and easy to use. The to-do list allows the user to input tasks that they want to achieve, and when they complete the task, they are able to delete the tasks as needed. The music and ambience picker can be used simultaneously to layer sounds over each other. There are two different options for the music and four different options for the ambience (thunder, nature, fireplace and ocean). The stopwatch simply has a start and stop button, and to make sure you don’t wander onto any distracting sites, it pauses counting if you leave the site.
How we built it
We used Repl.it, and in it, JavaScript, CSS and HTML to build the website. As well, all the graphics are hand-drawn, such as the dog, the background, the icons and the doghouse.
Challenges we ran into
There were many challenges we ran into when we made this project. One of the many challenges we faced was that the code did not run as we anticipated it to. Although it is completely normal to have code segments not functioning, the amount of time spent on figuring out where we went wrong was more than the time spent on the code itself. We had to spend several hours attempting to speed-learn new concepts that we had never used before, while also adapting these new concepts immediately into this project. However, this challenge has taught us that learning something new requires patience, dedication, and time. Although we did not have much time, given that we had 24 hours to complete this project, we did not lose hope and continued to do our best regardless. Another challenge we faced was the alignment of each part of the project. For instance, the start and stop buttons for the timer, the text box on the wooden sign, and the music/ambience selectors. As the positioning of each part was crucial in the development of the project, it was indeed a struggle to get them to align properly. Despite the many challenges that we have encountered over the past 24 hours, we have learned that the journey of one’s coding experience and having fun during the process are what counts the most. We will definitely cherish the time we had spent together, and will use this experience to further develop our skills and to grow as programmers and as individuals.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud of completing the project - even if the project is simple at a glance, we struggled tremendously with it, with the learning and the implementation, since we’re still very new with code. As well, with creating all the graphics, it added an extra workload on top. With the final product, we’re also excited to use it ourselves and hopefully it might help some other people with their own studying.
What we learned
We learned that coding is hard and frustrating and that patience and time is extremely important to creating a successful project. and that making Devpost submission videos is painful. We also learned that time management is very important, since we still somehow managed to procrastinate while working on a project that was meant to stop procrastination. It turns out that we needed our own creation during the process of the creation. In terms of the code itself, we learned a lot about a few different capabilities of JS, HTML and CSS, like playing audio, creating to-do lists, receiving prompts, etc.
What's next for Study Buddy
We hope to expand the features of the website, such as adding more music, ambience and perhaps actions with the dog, etc, as well as fixing the bugs that are still lurking in the code. Once we learn more about web development and all the possibilities of the languages we used, we hope to create a more complex and interactive website with the same premise.
Thank you for viewing our project and for all the work you have done in making this experience memorable! :)
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