Nudgy

A focus-driven productivity app that nudges you with the task at hand.

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Inspiration

Behavioral science: Youtube’s autoplay and Instagram’s scrolling are addictive features that often keep users on the app for many more hours than they want by practically putting the next video in front of the user without the user having to do anything; the next video is VISIBLE, and EASY to access. Nudgy is designed as the opposite of that—an almost antidote—as it puts your tasks in front of you according to a schedule you specify, making your task easier to start by making it VISIBLE and EASY to access. A common reason to-do items don’t get completed is that users forget about them after becoming busy with other things, or it takes a few steps to set up the item, which is just enough to trigger procrastination; the tasks are INVISIBLE and DIFFICULT to access.

In addition, conventional productivity apps, while useful, are often easy for users to circumvent. Users can easily ignore items that need to get done or forget to check their to-do list. Especially people with ADHD or other difficulties can find it hard to get started on a task.

By eliminating these inefficiencies, Nudgy reduces the unnecessary stress in your life and gives you more time to finally read that book you wanted to read or hang out with your friends.

What it does

We decided to make a product that has the functionality of a to-do list, with the added special feature to “nudge” users of tasks that need to be done, based on behavioral science. At specified times, the application will open the associated task, reminding the user that it needs to get done and putting it right in front of the user, making it easy to get started. Once the task is opened, the application will prevent users from ignoring it or getting distracted by making sure that the browser is brought to the front of the users screen for 2 minutes, ensuring that they get started on the task.

How we built it

We used our brains and typed text onto our computers. We used an Electron app template for our app, HTML/CSS/JS for frontend, Python in a Flask framework for backend, and Figma for a rough design. We used Warp for terminal prompts, inspiration, and troubleshooting.

Challenges we ran into

During the hackathon, we ran into challenges identifying how to best go about working on our product with our given skill sets.

For example, we made a working app interface (frontend) and a working program that ran scripts (backend), but we had trouble integrating both together. This was especially apparent when we started adding additional features, which at times, caused others to fail; through enough learning and debugging throughout the hackathon, we were able to fix most of those issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team of first-time hackers, being able to get through it and actually build a functional product was an accomplishment.

What we learned

We learned how to integrate front-end and back-end, think through the workflow and design process to plan and organize (and cut losses when unfortunately necessary), and collaborate with other developers in real-time. We learned how to write code that interacts with various aspects of the computer, for example to check what time it is, or how to bring an app window to the front of the screen. We also learned about various frameworks, such as web browser security architecture, along the way.

What's next for Nudgy

We made a mockup design in Figma that we would like to implement further; because of the limited timeframe, we weren't able to create the full design and made a simpler-looking prototype. Potential additional functionalities that we would like to implement include blocking other browser tabs, improving upon the UI/design, and implementing a reward system to encourage the user to continue using Nudgy to improve their productivity.

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