DinoBud | Devpost

Inspiration

In a world where almost anything you want to learn is available on the internet, many of us still struggle to commit to our personal learning goals. Unlike learning goals set by our schools, there is no real consequence to hold us accountable. Want to read more? Want to brush up on visual design skills? Many of these “wants” outside of our routines are usually left in the abstract. It’s hard to make a plan of where to start and stick to it consistently.

This is where DinoBud comes in - an innovative app that combines the power of accountability partners, AI coaching, and a delightful dino-raising gamification mechanism (inspired by Webkins pets and Tamagotchi) to help users take incremental, concrete, steps and take consistent actions to achieve their learning goals.

At the heart of DinoBud is the concept of accountability partners. An eye-opening statistic from the American Society of Training and Development states that “people are 65 percent likely to meet a goal after making their goal public. But their chances of success increase to 95 percent when they have a specific accountability partner to report to.” This feature allows users to invite a friend or family member to join them on their learning journey. By having a partner, users can socially commit to their goals and work towards them together. This not only provides motivation and support but also allows users to see their partner's progress and keep each other accountable.

What it does

DinoBud is an accountability partner system where a user can set their learning goal, choose their punishment, write four tangible tasks, add a partner, and raise a dino together with their partner. DinoBud’s main purpose is to encourage people to learn. And not just say “I want to learn,” but rather take actionable steps to achieve their learning goals. First, the user can sign up for the web app and input a learning goal. They will also select a consequence if they didn’t accomplish the goal. Then, they can invite a friend to the platform with a link, who will also be working towards a learning goal. They can keep track of each other’s progress, which in turn, can motivate each other to complete the tasks they set out to do.

But accountability partners are just one piece of the puzzle. DinoBud also utilizes AI coaching to help users tackle the common pain point of not knowing where to start. By sourcing the best learning roadmap and relevant content, the AI coach can help break down abstract goals into concrete steps that users can work on each week. This ensures that users are not overwhelmed with their learning goals and can make consistent progress toward them. After all, learning goals can be abstract and it’s hard to know where to start. When goals are fuzzy, people don’t know when they failed at them. It can also select the most helpful educational content based on their learning goal, and serve as a tutor that can generate quizzes or answer any questions. The specific content it recommends can help students commit to a learning goal since they now have a specific step to work towards.

The app also optimizes for delight by incorporating a pet-raising mechanic, similar to Tamagotchi. Users can raise their dino pet alongside their accountability partner and watch it transform and grow based on a score calculated from their progress. The dino feeds onto the tasks that the users complete. Initially, it’s an egg. Once both the user and their accountability partner finish a task, it hatches. It continues to evolve based on the number of tasks users completed (which was then transformed into points). The Dino would get mad and nudge the user if they are behind their accountability partner when the weekly challenge is approaching an end, and its interaction with the user would change based on how well the user sticks to their learning goals. In the end, if the user accomplished the tasks they set, the Dino would reward them with a new egg, with different dinos that they can raise with accountability partners and collect. This adds a fun and interactive element to the learning journey and makes users care about their progress and their pet. The gamification and aspect that allows users to collect rewards over time can help them stick with the web app.

Ultimately, DinoBud emphasizes a good user experience, a thoughtfully designed user flow, and creative integration of AI coaching and pet-raising mechanics. By providing users with accountability partners and personalized AI coaching, DinoBud empowers users to achieve their learning goals and transform their lives.

How we built it

We first discussed and carefully finalized the feature requirements, specs, and user flows. Then, the team split up into two broad pods: developers (2) & designers (2). The two designers worked together to design all the wireframes and hi-fi mockups in Figma. On the development side, the developers proceeded to build the application in MERN Stack. Our database was MongoDB, using Mongoose as an ORM. Our backend is Express, with built-in User Authentication and link-based sharing. Our Frontend utilizes ReactJS to make the UI designs and direct the flow of the application.

Challenges we ran into

There were a few challenges that our team ran into. First, in the beginning, we had a difficult time settling on one idea to tackle. We had an entire Figjam board filled with over 40 sticky notes each with a new idea for projects we were interested in. In the end, we did an anonymous vote, discussed A LOT, and decided to focus on building DinoBud. Throughout the development cycle, we had issues where cross-feature communication was not working properly, and problems with developing the designed UI components and setting up the application but at the end of the day, we tackled those problems through a granular level and figured out the solutions for them.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

In a short span of 36 hours, our team built a full-on, working MERN stack web app. In fact, we really only finalized the idea & specs by Saturday at 11:30 AM. Also, we didn’t start from the tech and build something for the sake of building it. Instead, we carefully thought through the user requirements, user needs, and potential use cases of our idea. We also created the Figma prototype from scratch and recorded the demo in a very short amount of time. This not only gave us a technical perspective of our app but helped us visualize the business aspect of our application and how we can make this a real product.

What we learned

The value of a hackathon is the opportunity to work with different types of team members. And this one was no exception. It’s important to consider every team member’s perspectives and find a compromise. Healthy disagreements are completely normal at a hackathon, and because of those, we were able to come up with so many ideas and eventually finalize one idea that we’re all excited to build.

Understanding tradeoffs was also crucial. What could be built with the timeframe left? Should we include this feature? What’s the purpose of this design element? Is it truly necessary? How can we develop this more efficiently? These were the questions frequently asked by the team when developing the application, and they were important questions. With only 36 hours, feature prioritization and engineering workarounds helped us not waste time on the granular details and actually build out the application before the deadline.

What's next for DinoBud

We would love to conduct a series of usability tests to validate the use cases for our idea. In addition, we also have a list of features that we would love to implement. Some notable examples include linking this web app with a Chrome extension which will provide users with reminders throughout the week. On top of this, we can feature a dashboard that will store multiple learning goals with different partners. We want to make this app accessible to everyone so we can develop a mobile version of this web app and have a seamless connection between the web app and mobile app for a user.

Further, we can implement Match-making algorithms to the application where people can get connected to others based on their “Goals”, “Points”, or “Consequences”. This would make a really robust platform where people are being connected to someone who they will find interesting leading them to be more interested in opening this application eventually leading them to complete more goals.