Study Arena

Learn Smarter, Not Harder.

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Inspiration:

We were inspired by how difficult and passive studying becomes when students rely only on long PDFs, lecture notes, and textbooks. Many students struggle to stay focused, and traditional study methods don’t reinforce memory effectively. We wanted to create a tool that makes learning active, fun, and personalized — using the student’s own material.

What it does:

StudyArena converts any uploaded PDF into interactive learning games. It extracts text locally and generates multiple study formats such as MCQs, flashcards, fill-in-the-blanks, and mini-quizzes. The goal is to help students learn faster and enjoy the studying process through gamification.

How we built it:

We built the frontend using React, TypeScript, Vite, TailwindCSS, and shadcn/ui for a clean and fast UI. PDF text is extracted locally using pdf.js, ensuring privacy. The extracted text is sent to an n8n workflow, which processes the data and returns AI-generated questions and learning content in structured JSON. The app renders these as playable interactive games.

Challenges we ran into:

  • Converting messy PDF text into clean, usable content
  • Maintaining consistent question quality across different PDFs
  • Designing a flexible UI that works with multiple game types
  • Building everything smoothly within a short hackathon timeframe

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

  • A fully working PDF-to-game pipeline
  • Clean UI/UX with fast performance
  • Multiple study game modes built from scratch
  • Reliable content generation through n8n workflows
  • Created a tool that genuinely helps students learn better

What we learned:

  • How to integrate pdf.js for local extraction
  • How to design AI-driven workflows in n8n
  • How to structure JSON for dynamic game rendering
  • The importance of simple design under time pressure
  • How to turn educational content into interactive experiences

What's next for Study Arena:

  • More game modes (matching, diagrams, spaced repetition)
  • Adaptive difficulty using user performance
  • Support for handwritten notes (OCR)
  • Leaderboards and collaborative study modes
  • Mobile app version for studying on the go

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