Avon: Your Personal Copilot

These are just some of the productivity apps we have productivity apps we have personally used. But they all have the same big issues.
For instance, they require too much of your manual input and the UI is so cluttered that makes the process so inefficient.
As students juggling a lot of commitments, we need a schedule to keep up with with everything
This includes building and staying consistent with your healthy habits
You can "text" Avon whenever a new task pops up. Before every event, your assistant will check in and adjust if things don't go by plan.
Here is a summary of the common problems including stats for an average american working adult.
Start your day right because your assistant will be giving you your morning briefing to help start your day with clarity and focus.
And most importantly, it is accessible via simple text commands.
Introducing Avon: Your productivity co-pilot, giving you real-time updates, adjustments, and reminders tailored to your life's pace.
End your day right with reflection and plan for the next day!
Thank you!
All in all, Avon's value proposition is that it is designed to be with you, from the moment you wake up until bedtime.

Inspiration

The challenge is deeply personal: we've been grappling with time management and productivity issues for years, and the struggle has intensified in college. Now, we're not just juggling academic courses; we're also navigating full-time internships at fast-paced startups and adapting to life in a new country. Add family, friends, and travel to the mix, and there's hardly a moment to even consider health and wellness.

We've tried planning out our days in advance, but life's unpredictability renders most schedules obsolete. Common productivity apps fall short; they're clunky, require excessive manual input, and often include unnecessary features that bog us down rather than free us up.

Our dream? To have our own personal assistant—someone who keeps tabs on our tasks, events, reminders, and habit goals, all while dynamically adjusting our schedule as life happens. But we are young college students with barely an income! Like the majority of the population, we can't afford a personal assistant. But what if a chatbot could offer the same level of tailored support?

That's what inspired our hackathon project. We're creating an AI-driven chatbot designed to emulate the personal assistant experience, one that can handle all aspects of planning and scheduling. Our vision is a solution where you can input everything in one intuitive platform, requiring minimal clicks. Imagine waking up each morning to a ready-made schedule, optimized for your day. Even better, imagine that schedule intelligently adapting in real-time as tasks are completed or delayed, eliminating stress and boosting efficiency.

By letting AI handle the planning, we can focus on what truly matters, thereby enhancing our overall quality of life. And that's not just efficient—that's revolutionary.

What it does

Avon, our AI-driven chatbot serves as your intelligent personal assistant for holistic life management. She takes the hassle out of planning by automating your daily, weekly, and even monthly schedules. Here's how it works:

Unified Input: Simply input all your tasks, events, reminders, and habit goals into Avon's intuitive interface. Just text it like how you would if you had a personal assistant and you're all set.

Morning Briefing: Every morning, you receive a ready-to-go schedule straight to your phone. Tailored to your needs and priorities, this daily schedule is designed to maximize productivity and well-being.

Dynamic Adjustment: Life is unpredictable, and that's where Avon shines. If a meeting runs long or you finish a task early, the chatbot immediately recalibrates your schedule, sending you real-time updates to keep you on track.

Efficiency Insights: Gain actionable insights into your time management and productivity patterns through Avon's robust analytics. Avon is also integrated with Terra API which enables Avon to get data from your wearables and all your health apps which can be used to continually refine your goals and habits for a healthier lifestyle.

Habit Tracking: Beyond simple reminders, Avon helps you build and maintain healthy habits by intelligently incorporating them into your dynamic daily plan.

By handling the heavy lifting of planning and adjustment, Avon frees you up to focus on what truly matters. Whether you're balancing schoolwork, thriving in a startup, or exploring a new city, Avon is the reliable partner you've been waiting for, making your entire life not just manageable but remarkably efficient.

How we built it

This was a massive team effort. We split roles and took ownership of different aspects to come together, in true software engineering style :P

The main division was between frontend and backend, and between notifications, AI workflows, and building an entire chat interface to rival ChatGPT

Challenges we ran into

Google Calendar Integration: Integrating with Google Calendar proved to be a complex endeavor. From handling API limitations to synchronizing data and creating/modifying events, we had to navigate a labyrinth of technical intricacies to ensure a flawless user experience.

AI Prompt Engineering: Designing an AI system that could construct sensible and efficient schedules was a challenging feat. The process required an in-depth understanding of algorithms and natural language processing to ensure that the AI-generated schedules were both logical and aligned with user preferences.

Notification System: On the surface, sending out notifications might appear straightforward, but the reality is far more complex. Implementing a reliable, real-time notification service required us to dive deep into various technologies and protocols, such as WebSocket for persistent connections and service workers for push notifications. The challenge wasn't just about sending notifications, but about ensuring they were delivered at the right time, to the right device, in the most resource-efficient manner.

Mobile App Creation: Despite having some experience, we had to build our mobile app, run and test it while building big back-end workflows to do the trick. This made designing for UI double the pain, as we had to be exact and quick

Tackling these challenges has been both an educative and humbling experience. They've not only offered us valuable technical lessons but have also shaped our approach to refining Avon into an efficient tool.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Within the tight timeframe of the hackathon, we not only ideated but also successfully built a working prototype that demonstrates the core features of Avon. We spent hours trying to design for another idea but finally narrowed down and decided on what Avon is right now.

Achieving a user-friendly design was a top priority for us. We're proud that our interface is not only functional but also intuitive, reducing the learning curve for new users.

We successfully managed to implement smart scheduling that effectively recalibrate schedules in real-time, a feat not commonly found in most scheduling apps.

We were also especially happy that we could integrate tasks, events, reminders, and habit goals all in one place which eliminates the need for so many unnecessary niche single-purpose apps, making the management process to be so much more efficient.

We're particularly proud of the analytics feature, which empowers users to make data-backed decisions for continuous lifestyle improvement. Especially, using Terra API for the first time, to get important health data, enabling users to live healthier lifestyles.

Last but not least, we're proud of the synergy our team demonstrated. Despite different skill sets and areas of expertise, we trusted each other till the very end to hopefully deliver a finished product and we did!

What we learned

Mobile app development, building complex app workflows, integrating health APIs, calendar APIs and different micro-services

The main learning curve was bringing huge workflows and pieces together, to help the end-user live a comfortable life

What's next for Avon

Our vision for Avon doesn't stop at being just a highly efficient scheduling assistant. We recognize that every individual is unique, each with distinct needs and preferences. We're committed to evolving Avon from a one-size-fits-all solution into a highly customizable tool that can adapt to a wide range of lifestyles. Here are just a few ideas we wish to work on for Avon:

Custom Notification Styles: Some people prefer nudges; others need full-blown alarms. We'll offer customizable notification styles to match your personal preferences.

Reflection Flexibility: Not everyone finds value in daily reflections. We'll introduce an option to skip or customize this feature to better suit your lifestyle.

Priority Focus: Should you want to concentrate on a specific activity or area, Avon will offer a feature that allows you to flag this for enhanced scheduling focus.

Task Decomposition: For complex assignments or goals, Avon will offer the ability to break tasks down into subtasks, allocating time for each to make completion more manageable.

Work-Type Preferences: Whether you prefer tackling difficult projects in the morning or handling lighter tasks in the afternoon, Avon's smart scheduling will adapt to your work-type preferences.

Automated Task Extraction: We're planning integrations that will automatically extract tasks and reminders from emails and collaboration platforms like Slack, streamlining your input process even further.

Our mission is to continually adapt and iterate Avon, ensuring it remains the ultimate tool for managing your ever-evolving life efficiently.