BetterBuddy

Learning is better with buddies!

Comment

Inspiration

People often get sudden bursts of motivation to learn a new skill, but that motivation often fizzles out quickly. This is shown by the sales vs completion of online courses that people usually take to learn a new skill on their own. Approximately 40% of students across public, nonprofit, and for-profit institutions are enrolled in some form of an online course, but the average completion rate of an online course is less than 10%. The problem with this is that online courses lack many factors that increase an individual's motivation. We want people to actually reach their learning goals. Our solution is BetterBuddy.

What it does

BetterBuddy helps you find a like-minded buddy who shares the same goals, interests, or skillset as you. From there, you can attend workshops to develop the same skill

You create an account and a profile, and then start searching for a buddy to learn a new skill with. Our platform will suggest several other users who have the same interests, skill level, learning timeline, and are located close to you. You'll be able to read more about each user more through their bios, and select the one that you feel the most comfortable with. After selecting your buddy, you can either message your buddy to get to know them first, or directly select an event that you want to go with them.

Both of you will be able to purchase event tickets through the event site (for now), and to make sure that both buddies hold up their end of their promise, your event ticket purchase will be refunded if your buddy does not purchase their ticket after 24 hours.

How I built it

BetterBuddy will be a web-based application. We first wireframed and prototyped the whole site using Figma. Given the time constraints of a hackathon, we mostly focused on using hard-coding to create a functional layout of the website. This was done using HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and Javascript. We also planned to use Django framework and SQL for the backend development and creating of features such as user accounts, storage and retrievement of information, and more.

Challenges I ran into

Due to the lack of time available develop BetterBuddy, the backend is not fully formed yet. It is feasible, and we understand what we need to use to build the backend on (as described above).

What I learned

We realized that so much thought goes into starting a new business. From the technical side, such as how to create the database, to the layout & design and all the little aspects involved, and even our business model like how we are going to generate revenue and who our potential partners are.

What's next for BetterBuddy

After it has been fully developed as a working website, BetterBuddy will start looking for learning event organizers/hosters to partner with. For now, several partners we have identified include Ladies Learning Code, Bitmaker, and more. Then, we'll start marketing our platform to acquire users through social media advertising, on-site marketing at relevant events, and more.

Built With

Share this project:

Updates