FocusDucky

Your Focus Buddy helping you stay in the flow.

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Inspiration

We're students, and let’s be honest — this is our age to be productive and make the most of our time. But we also get distracted veryyyyy easily. I’m sure it’s not just me who walks into the library, sets up my desk, makes a detailed to-do list, starts a timer with full motivation… and 30 minutes later, I’m watching YouTube Shorts that have absolutely nothing to do with my IEE380 class. Classic, right?

Ducky Icon

What it does

That’s what inspired us to build FocusDucky — your focus buddy to keep you on track. The idea is simple: at the start of a focus session, you tell Ducky what you’re working on, and if you start veering off-topic, it gives you gentle, friendly nudges to help you re-focus. It’s not strict, not judgmental — just your cute little accountability partner.

How ducky nudges

How we built it

We built FocusDucky using a lightweight, modern stack: Electron for the desktop app, React with Vite, TailwindCSS, and TypeScript for the frontend. We used Figma for designing the UI — we wanted something that looked fun but stayed minimal.

Challenges we ran into

There were definitely some challenges.

  • One of the trickiest parts was figuring out when the Ducky should step in. It had to be smart enough to know the difference between a necessary tab switch and full-on procrastination.
  • We also worked on minimizing hallucinations — making sure Ducky's reminders stayed on point and relevant to the context of the session.
  • And since this was our first time using Electron, getting the desktop app to work was challenging.

Screenshot

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud of what we accomplished — especially as a team of just two. We didn’t want to end up building yet another chatbot, and we pushed ourselves to create something fresh and genuinely useful. We know we’re not the only ones who needed this, and that’s what kept us going. This is a tool that students like us would actually want to use.

Throughout the process, we learned a ton. It was my first time working with Electron, and it's always fun to learn a new technology. We also deepened our understanding of design — learning how to simplify, declutter, and create interfaces that feel intuitive and pleasant to use. We built something that makes sense, both functionally and emotionally.

What's next for FocusDucky

After this hackathon, we’re excited to complete FocusDucky, open source it, and launch our best version of it for everyone. We truly believe it has the potential to help so many people — and we can’t wait to share it with the world.

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