Notester

Born out of necessity, Notester was an idea taken straight out of our lives. Taking notes is the backbone of successful learning. Being students ourselves, we know how painstaking note-taking can be.

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Inspiration

Our team, Hamstraz, has created a helpful tool for college students who are struggling to keep a record of their notes in an organized fashion. When entering college, the amount of information can quickly disorganize students' notes and become forever lost or forgotten. Therefore, Hamstarz has developed a simple solution: Notester. Notester is a web application that helps students to log their notes in an organized fashion. Users, who are called 'Hamsters' in Notester, can sign up and log in to their accounts and have access to different features such as adding new notes, viewing notes organized by course codes, and also interacting with other 'Hamsters' to motivate them in note-taking and studying.

What it does

Notester is a desktop web application that simply allows one to quickly take notes (in and out of the classroom), effortlessly organize them by course code tabs just like a real folder, and file them away for ease of retrieval whenever needed.

How we built it

Together, we came up with an idea of a note-taking application that is user-friendly, especially for college students. We brainstormed what is required to be stored in the database (eg. attributes such as course code, course name, date, time, title, etc). Once we created a basic blueprint, we split our group of four (4), into two (2) teams and divided up essential tasks. One team was tasked with front-end design aspects, while the second team was responsible for the back-end functions and data development. Once all tasks were completed, we combined our work via GitHub and began final touch-ups for a polished product.

Challenges we ran into

First of all, being second-year college students ourselves, we found that our lack of experience in hackathons and skills in various programming languages made it very challenging to complete our tasks as quickly as desired. Also, the ability to co-operate solely over the web, via Discord and Github, made communication harder than an in-person collaboration. The time constraint was also a limiting factor that hindered the production of our desired finished product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The main accomplishment for our team is that we finished it! For that, we are very proud of our team who are all first-time participants in Hackathon. Considering the time constraints, our current skill levels, and our experience, we believe that we did a great job in creating something useable in a real-world setting. Through this first Hackathon, we wanted to experience what it was like to be part of this type of competition. We can confidently say that we have no regrets!

What we learned

  1. A good plan goes a long way. Like a good map, it allows one to navigate more easily and quickly; being able to better adapt to hurdles that may arise.
  2. Having a great idea is key in development. Even though we had many great ideas, without the necessary skills, it was difficult to implement fully functioning features. In addition, both strategy and execution are vital for success.
  3. Communication is a significant aspect of programming. Having more bodies to do work does not always equate to a better outcome. Having teammates that can communicate well, work cohesively, and encourage each other along the way is very important.

Whether we succeed or fail is not the main focus! Taking on new challenges and learning from them helps us grow and prepares us for future projects and endeavors. With each success, we build confidence that takes us to new heights. With every failure, we learn to rise from it. We are very excited about the next challenge! Bring it on!

What's next for Notester

We understand that all students can use some help organizing their studies. That is where Notester comes in. However, the ability to customize their Notester files using different characters, stickers, post-it notes, personal avatars, and emojis will be a way for students to personalize and add flair and charm to them. We also hope to provide new features, such as alarm, alerts/event alerts, time-table management, daily planner, journals, fitness planners, and so much more. We believe this will help improve their quality of student life.

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