Marinomenta

Marinomenta is a product that aims to bridge the gap between students, mentors and learning resources, simultaneously providing them a platform to expand their knowledge about marine life

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Inspiration

I saw that many people around me were interested to learn about marine life and were constantly looking for resources to learn about it. However, there weren't enough interactive resources available. They could find books and articles by experts, but the complex and technical terminologies used were difficult for beginners in the field to understand. In addition to this, some students faced difficulties in finding mentorship programs and resources to study various subjects. Therefore, I felt, it was the need of the hour to develop a product that would bridge this gap between learners and resources.

What it does

Benjamin Franklin has rightly said, "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Keeping this in mind, I developed Marinomenta, which is a web based application that provides learners with a platform to gain knowledge in a fun, visual and interactive manner. The application has two aspects. Firstly, it provides users with interactive maps to study about oceans, marine life and various other topics tangential to it. Secondly, it provides students with a platform, where they can access resources shared by mentors. Matthea Harvey once quoted, "Teaching is a great way to keep learning.", Marinomenta provides a platform to mentors to increase their knowledge by sharing it with others.

How we built it

In order to build the application, I started with the basic authentication system boilerplate that includes a login and register page with email and password authentication. Then I added functionality required specifically for this product to the authentication system. Moving forward, I built the interactive maps and integrated them into the application. After this, I built the discussion forum where users can interact with each other. Once that was done, I moved on to the profile page, where users can see their profile along with their posts in the forum. Further, I built the subject specific pages where mentors can post resources and study material for the students to study from. Once that was done, the backend of the application was nearly done and I moved to the frontend, designed and created the homepage, looked for images and logos and did the styling. Once that was done I looked for bugs in the app and ways to improve user experience. I added 403 and 404 pages for their respective purposes. One problem that popped up was to find a way for users to update their profile. I completed that feature and the app was ready to deploy. Minor changes in the design and styling followed till the last minute.

Challenges we ran into

The first challenge I ran into was to think of an idea for the application that would solve a real world problem in an optimal way. After some time, I came up with this idea. Previously, I had tried to build applications fulfilling the same purpose, but was unable to build a completely functioning one, with an optimized code base. However, I had decided to achieve this goal through this hackathon. The second challenge I ran into was to decide the tech stack to be used. I had a few options but finally decided to go with Node.js EJS and MongoDB. Many minor challenges popped up while building the application, which were solved along the way.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I wanted to build something that has a wide target audience, something, that can be used by the general audience in their daily lives. I did not want to build a product limited to a people in a particular industry or age group. I wanted to build something that would simplify the everyday lives of the users while simultaneously making them learn something new each day. Marinomenta is the product, through which I have fulfilled this desire.

What we learned

This was the first time I was working on a solo project for a hackathon. I learnt numerous new skills on the way. One that I relish the most was to learn to take a project from the idea stage to the deployment stage. Although there were innumerable skills and tasks that I learnt along the way, this was the most noticeable one.

What's next for Marinomenta

Marinomenta has a lot more to come down the road. I plan to add more features to it in the future. Video Calling and chat features to name a few as some students prefer to learn in groups. In addition to this, I plan to integrate more maps into the application, add more subjects and ways to check the educational qualifications of the mentors in order to keep a check on the authenticity of the content.

Credits

Images have been taken from various web portals.

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