Studyin'

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  Studyin' Color Palette

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Inspiration

Our group decided to develop a user interface (UI) design for our app, Studyin’. Studyin’ is a play on words between studying and studying in concentration and in groups with others. The inspiration for this mobile application was the common problem of procrastination among members of the UTD and other college communities. According to Very Well Health, “procrastinators will often do other tasks in advance of starting or returning to a task or commitment they're avoiding” (verywellhealth.com). One possible cause for this is disorganization and the fear of failure. In addition it is shown that around 50% of engineering majors switch majors by the end of their sophomore year; this is largely due to inefficient study habits. To combat these relatable struggles, we created an application that helps the student community plan study sessions and stay accountable for their studying.

What it does

Upon first downloading the app, users will log in with their student accounts. If the students already have an account, they will open the app to a welcome screen displaying their study streak. We implemented this streak in the beginning to encourage users to increase their frequency of studying and keep themselves accountable for consistent work. Rather than trying to finish their entire project or cram for a test in a few days or even one day, students using the Studyin’ app are driven to spread out their studying over a span of time in order to improve spatial awareness and address memory issues caused by the curve of forgetting. As the welcome screen is dismissed, the user will then be able to view the home screen, which has a menu that lists the classes a student is in, a study timer, study stats, and upcoming assignments. At the bottom of the screen, there is also a navigation bar that has five icons:

1. Home
2. Classes
3. Timer
4. Direct Messaging
5. Profile The button for “My Classes” leads to the page connected to the second button on the bottom navigation bar. The “Study Timer” button is connected to the third button on the navigation bar, and the “Check My Study Stats” and “Assignments” buttons lead to separate pages. In the Classes tab, there is one box for each class the user is currently enrolled in. Each box, when clicked, leads to a corresponding page that displays other people enrolled in the class, a group chat for the class, grades, study statistics, a study timer button, and a countdown for the number of days until the next exam. The button for people is for users to connect with classmates outside of class and give them the option to have study groups. The group chat feature is for all students in the class to ask questions and get them quickly answered. The grades button helps the student view their grades on their phone easily and keep themselves accountable. By pressing the button to “Start Studying,” the user will be sent to the study timer clock. In settings, the user will be able to choose how long each study period lasts and how long their breaks are in order to accommodate individual preferences. Underneath the timer is a counter that displays the number of people who are studying for the same class at the same time. The goal of this feature is to eliminate the anxious feeling associated with studying. By seeing the people who are also studying, users won’t feel as alone and may be inspired by their academic surroundings to get their study in. On the other hand, if users feel like joining a large general room, they can simply access it using the center button on the navigation bar at the bottom of the screen. The “Assignments” button on the home page leads to an assignments page ordered in due soonest to latest. Assignments are color coded by classes. Doing so can assist students in prioritizing assignments and stay organized with their work, ultimately increasing productivity and saving time. The Study Stats page displays the total time the user has studied in a Sunday-Saturday week, along with the number of assignments they have completed for the week. A bar graph displays a visual representation for how long the user studied on particular days throughout the week, and the longest study day and how long the study session was. The fourth button on the navigation bar is the direct messaging feature. Users can compose direct messages and group conversations. The purpose of this feature is to help students establish a digital community and even plan in-person meetings and group study sessions. The direct messaging feature also allows users to attach files like images, word documents, and pdfs to share with others. There is also a voice recording option instead of typing out a text. Lastly, the settings feature provides users more options to customize their experience with the app. For example, they can edit the duration of their study periods and the lengths of their breaks. Also, they can change the frequency of their notifications and edit their profiles. The profile tab is the rightmost button on the bottom of the navigation bar. When users look through the list of students registered for a class, when they click on a student, they can view a simple profile that contains a short biography, the students’ grade level, and the courses they are taking for the semester. That way, students in the same class can make friends with other people they may not have reached out to otherwise, fostering a great community culture outside the traditional classroom setting. ## How we built it During our brainstorming, we thought about projects that could improve a problem within the community. Then, we thought about possible communities we could impact. That is how we came to the realization that we wanted to develop an app for students like us to improve the ease of studying in their lives and spend more time interacting with the academic and outside communities. Our group used the wireframing app Figma to create a mobile phone application mock-up. Each person had something to design, and we decided on a color palette from Coolers to create a cohesive color scheme for our app. Then, by prototyping, we were able to link certain buttons to different pages within our app so it could be navigated like a real mobile app. The reason why we decided on a mobile app is because phones are extremely common for people to have on them at all times, so utilizing that convenience to our advantage, we realized that a phone app would be most useful and easily accessible by students compared to a web app. ## Challenges we ran into One of the challenges our group ran into was determining what path we were going to take with our project. Since all of us in the group are first-year students, we knew we were less experienced than the majority of participants competing in the hackathon. Consequently, rather than trying to out-program the seniors, we decided to combine our young minds and funnel our efforts into the creative design and conceptual portion of the app. By doing so, we were able to create a better, more comprehensive model of our mobile application. If we were to have more time, learning how to code this project would be the next step in our hacking. ## Accomplishments that we're proud of One of the biggest accomplishments our group is proud of is simply showing up, participating, and finishing our project. A big struggle that we saw some groups face was having to re-pivot their initial ideas and completely scrap their projects. Luckily for us, we did not have to change ideas in the middle of our work. For us, gaining HackUTD experience will prepare us to compete even stronger than we have this year and hopefully even stronger in subsequent years. ## What we learned Our group learned that competing in events like HackUTD are much more applicable and engaging than school assignments. Learning to create intrinsic motivation for creating something from scratch was something we had never experienced before, and certainly not to an extent this large. We gained so much knowledge about how hackathons work, what it takes to code for long periods of time, and most importantly, how to love what we do and work as a team. ## What's next for Studyin' For the future, Studyin' would love to gain feedback on app design and possible new idea implementations. We are open to adding new features, adjusting existing features, and developing our app if enough students were interested. Although this idea only came into existence less than 24 hours ago, we believe it has great potential to be a great tool for productivity and good habit-forming.

Built With

• coolors
• figma