Rings

dashboard for your rings
specific info about a circle
viewing a friend's rings
a group workspace
chat function for common workspace
playlist function for common workspace

Inspiration

The checklist has been around for millennia and it is about time that it was reinvented for the modern-day! The old checklist is only available to one person, and can no longer efficiently function under today’s increasingly connected society. A cooperative checklist with a visual representation of information is urgently needed.

What it does

Our app, Rings, presents all your tasks in an easy-to-view visualization with rings that keep deadlines in focus. As deadlines for a certain task approach, its ring shortens. With just a quick glance, you can keep you and your team hyper-aware and on task. Rings is unique in its social aspect - what we offer is a collaborative solution to time management. You can allow friends to view some of your tasks so that you get a friendly reminder instead of an easy-to-dismiss notification.

How we built it

We designed our app using Figma and bootstrapped our app with create-react-app. Our engineering process is seamlessly integrated with each other by extensive use of version control and branching. Although the team had different levels of experience with React, we had a successful workflow where the amateurs led the major development of the app infrastructure, and the novels followed the infused app with novel ideas.

Challenges we ran into

During the development of this app, all of us had to learn a bunch of different frameworks and libraries, such as React and Material-UI, to handle the engineering part. Although we are not pros, we all managed to learn on-the-fly and engineered awesome features for our app. Some of the frameworks did bring us a lot of troubles, such as Material-UI, which is too streamlined for customizable features. We had run into many technical issues when trying to incorporate our code with the framework. But with teamwork and perseverance (yay!), we crushed all the bugs and brought to life an innovative web app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to propose the concept of collaborative time management not only to increase efficiency and fight procrastination but also to build a community. We are also proud that despite the limited time, we were able to develop a web application with limited working features.

What we learned

During this process, we all developed a better understanding of the technical aspect of React and Javascript, as well as the design aspect for user interface and user experience. It was not only an intense learn-by-doing process for us to learn programming, but also a valuable experience about how these technologies could actually impact our lives. It was fun trying to solve the real-life problem of procrastination and the inconveniences of remote working with a simple programming attempt. Besides technical skills, this project was a test of remote teamwork in which we all gained a better understanding of how to operate a successful team project.

What's next for Rings

We look forward to adding more features to our web app, especially for the group workspace. We hope to build a more friendly UI with cuter graphics and animations. We want to let each user in the group choose a cartoon character as an avatar, which would be the user’s online presence in our app when they collaborate with their group in the workspace. By having a cartoon character for each user in the group, the app will make team members feel more connected, while not interrupting too much with each other’s work.

We also aim to develop an aesthetically pleasing interface for people to keep track of their progress, such as the work they have finished and the deadlines that they have survived. We have imagined this to be in the graphics of a garden, where each plant and flower correspond to a finished task. The users will be able to take joy in a fully grown garden as they make progress with their tasks.