Inspiration
A lifetime of roommates has taught us one thing - it almost impossible to maintain a balance between the contribution of each member to the household. From dirty dishes in the sink to running out of supplies at home, there is a strong need for a system that tracks the chores of every person in the house to ensure that everyone does their part.
What it does
Our app, Errands, allows roommates to create lists of tasks that need to be done around the house. The tasks are assigned a score based on the number of hours needed to complete them and everyone in the house is able to complete any task they wish to do. When someone completes a task they receive a score which reflects the number of hours needed to complete the task. A person's overall score reflects how much work they have been contributing to the house at large.
How we built it
We used Android Studio to build the app and used Firebase to build the back end for the project. The App consists of a navigation drawer and 4 fragments for different aspects of the App. We use a live database to allow real-time updates. The database consists of a roommates table and a tasks table.
Challenges we ran into
We initially started off by trying out a new framework for App development called React - after 3 hours, we realized that the learning curve was too steep so moved towards using Android Studio.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Getting Firebase to work.
What we learned
You should always leverage technologies you already know over technologies that you have no experience with.
What's next for Errands
The App is functional but can be improved. Currently, a user is shown a list of "To-do" tasks and the user can mark the tasks they've completed. At this time, the idea is that the user will go into the App and click the task after completion. However, in reality, this could cause issues like multiple people performing the same task. The ideal solution to this would be to allow users to select a task they want to complete and for the task to be marked as "pending" until the user comes back and marks it as complete.
Ideally, the App should keep a daily total for the number of hours each person spends and subsequently display daily or weekly averages for each of the roommates. This will allow the roommates to gauge everyone's contribution over time which may be especially useful in judging changes in people's behaviors over time. Currently, we just maintain a running total of the score but this would be easy to extend.
Furthermore, the App should probably not display tasks that are "too old" to ensure that the feed does not get too clutered.
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