Tether

Inspiration

We’ve all used study apps before that aim to keep you off your phone, but often found ourselves lacking that initial push of motivation. It's a relatable struggle—once you get started, it’s not too hard to find your rhythm, but getting into that focused mindset can be difficult when you're distracted by your phone or stuck doom-scrolling.

That’s when we thought, why not use some friendly competition to help people get started? By bringing people together, users can work toward a common goal while keeping each other accountable, aligning perfectly with the hackathon prompt, to bring community together.

We wanted to solve a problem that’s common in the lives of young people, including ourselves. Our app, Tether, symbolises this concept. Traditionally, a "tether" refers to something that ties or anchors you down, and we linked this idea to how our phones often hold us back or weigh us down. Additionally, Tether represents the act of anchoring down our focus and leaving distractions behind.

Development Process

We set out to solve a problem familiar to many young people, ourselves included—struggling to stay focused, especially when studying. With that idea in mind, we began outlining our app concept.

We started by designing the look and feel of the app on Canva, choosing a theme and colour palette that matched our vision. Next, we jumped into learning Expo and React Native, splitting tasks between front-end and back-end development. As we continued refining our designs, working on screens and buttons, we coordinated regular meetings to check progress and assign the next set of tasks.

Our efforts came together as we focused on the core technical aspects including setting up the server, implementing a real-time database, and handling authentication. Finalising the connections between the front end and back end was difficult, however we stuck through it and stayed optimistic! As the app started to come together, we filmed and edited a video submission to showcase our project. After many long days and sleepless nights, the project was finished.

Why your project is innovative / creative

While yes, there are plenty of focus or study apps available in the market, many of them are only useful for those who are already motivated. We aimed to target this issue by incorporating community and some friendly competition while also gamifying the process of staying focused.

What sets our project apart is its unique competitive aspect, featuring leaderboards and lobbies where users can see their friends’ dedication to the grind. We wanted to create an environment where you and your friends can hold each other accountable, almost like a virtual focus space. By blending social interaction with productivity, we hope to make productivity a bit more fun and engaging.

How we built it

We used Expo and Expo Go to host our development environment, which were both very useful for testing and hosting our project. The project was coded in JavaScript using the React Native framework, which provided the flexibility to create a mobile-friendly, cross-platform app.

For the design aspects, we relied on Canva to create the visual elements including the layout and colour schemes. On the technical side, we used Firebase for key features such as authentication and managing a real-time database, enabling us to provide real-time updates, thats real-cool right?

Team Roles

Our team is made up of Yazan, Liang, Jennifer, and Amalie, and we’re all participating in a hackathon for the very first time! Like many beginners, we were initially hesitant to join, but here we are, learning a ton along the way. We have learnt a lot of new tools and gained a lot of experience from this!

Yazan has taken on the back end of our app, working on key features like the stopwatch, leaderboard, authentication, and managing our Firebase databases. He’s truly been the saviour of the backend, handling our app’s main functionalities. He also did a lot of research and guided our team through various implementations.

Liang focused on transforming the design concepts into fully functional code. He turned Canva designs into screens for our app and handled the styling. Additionally, he has worked tightly with Yazan to implement much of the backend of our project, including the lobby and multiplayer elements. You’re looking at a future full-stack developer in the making! He’s also been our media genius, managing our video submission.

Jennifer has primarily worked on design and front-end development. She crafted many of the screen designs and characters you see throughout the project from scratch using Canva’s shape tools. She also worked on adding the screens, leaderboards, buttons and notifications, connecting the back end with the front end. She also handled the organisation and planning, ensuring the product would be developed on time.

Amalie contributed to the design of various key features, including the leaderboard, home screen, and buttons. Her contributions were very valuable to our project’s visual appeal.

Highlights

We also recognised that phones can still be hazardous to ‘connecting community’ when friends hang out, as people often find themselves glued to their screens. Beyond Tether's remote multiplayer features, we think users could also use the app while hanging out with friends or studying together. It could encourage people to start talking to each other again!

Also, we recognised that sometimes people need to quickly check a text or reply to a message. We don’t want tether to be restrictive of what phones are actually meant to be used for. That is why we have implemented a 15 second leeway and a warning notification for users.