Essay Advisor

Inspiration

College applicants are faced with the task of writing entry essays without having much experience in writing. I wanted to help college students with this process by providing a tool that helps them understand the reader's experience when they read their paper.

What it does

The service uses linguistic analytics to infer personality and behavior characteristics, including Big Five, Needs, and Values, from text.

How I built it

I utilized IBM's Bluemix alongside their Personality Insights API. I also made use of a ExpressJS boilerplate IBM provided in their docs. The whole development process was done on the IBM Cloud, this allowed me to avoid many of the headaches that come with building a local environment.

Challenges I ran into

This was the first time I ever used Bluemix, Personality Insights API, NodeJS, and ExpressJS. The whole technology stack was a learning curve I had overcome myself since my other team member dropped out early on in the competition.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I feel that this is a very useful product. Essay Advisor gives writers access to reader's experience, so it comes in handy in any writing situation. Especially when the goal is to influence how the reader distinguishes the writer.