Inspiration
Instead of weakly asking friends about their success in school and their productivity, this is an easy shortcut to your answers! Moreover, we have found that knowing about others’ success makes it more encouraging for us to work hard for the same result, so Peer Pressure Panda is the perfect solution: you get automated text messages whenever a peer completes their work, so you get reminded to do the same as well!
What it does
By creating an account, it allows you to create different groups with friends and add mutual assignments. Then, you can mark them off whenever you’re done—with the bonus effect of having notified all your friends in the group about your completion! Similarly, you will be texted about your friends’ successes so you can either cheer them on or get back to work with a rejuvenated spirit.
How we built it
We built the backend and the frontend portions of the web app concurrently. We first developed the server and a "login"/welcome page where users can identify themselves with information such as name, username, password, email. This user functionality was created in the backend with Javascript. The groups and assignments databases were also built in the backend, where the front-end web app retrieves that information and displays it in a user-friendly format. When the user marks something as "complete", then both the backend and the display are modified to reflect that change. We also used Twilio to send the update messages with a completed assignment and hosted the web app on Domain.com easy access.
Challenges we ran into
We originally tried to create the project using React Native and creating a phone app. However, we were all inexperienced with the platform and were unable to test our progress (as only one person had a Mac computer), so we, unfortunately, had to shelve that idea. We then switched to working with a website, which was something some of our members were more familiar with. We ran into a few challenges with regards to getting the Twilio text messages, as well, since that was new to us.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are definitely proud of being able to find a unique solution to the problem of procrastination which plagues everyone. Moreover, we were able to build a functional product in a short time limit and that could be utilized by other people. Since we were working on the React Native app for about six hours before turning to the web app, it is great that we have been able to finish something with most of its intended functionalities.
What we learned
We learned a lot about how to work around unexpected problems such as incompatibility with different software and also the computers we were coding on. While working on Peer Pressure Panda, we learned not only how to build a web app from the ground up, but also how to connect it with other services such as Twilio and how to host it with Domain.com.
What's next for Peer Pressure Panda
Since we didn’t end up developing a mobile application, that would be our next goal!
Additionally, we’d like to be able to include sub-groups. For example, if a group is assigned a partnered assignment, that should be reflected within the web app. If one member marks the task as complete, it should also show up for the other member and the text should include both their names. The other member should also not receive the completion text message.
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