PickUpTheSlack | Devpost

Inspiration

PickUpTheSlack is a project inspired by dirty dishes and unmopped floors. Shared responsibility in household chores often brings an unintended side effect: the diffusion of responsibility. When multiple people are accountable for the same task, it can lead to ambiguity over who should take action. Everybody was sure that somebody would do it - anybody could have done it, but nobody did it.

The problem is that life is busy, and shared responsibilities get messy. So, we decided to build an app that not only reminds people to do their tasks but makes the whole process fun—and maybe even rewarding.

What it does

PickUpTheSlack takes the chaos out of shared chores and personal productivity with features like:

Shared Task Tracking: Know exactly who’s responsible for what and when they’ve completed it.
Gamified Productivity: Complete tasks to win a race against your housemates.

How we built it

We brainstormed features inspired by failures met in our own lives. The development process combined user-friendly design and developing basic functionality to showcase what our app can do.

Challenges we ran into

Time constraints were the main challenges we ran into during this project as creating a complete design with some working functionality in less than two days was difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Producing an MVP in such a short amount of time.

What we learned

We learned how to work together with a newly-formed team of four individuals who had never met each other before this event. For some of us it was our first hackathon and it was a challenging but fun learning experience to discover different tools and how to use them to bring a whole new concept to life.

What's next for PickUpTheSlack

Extended features (coming soon):

Time-Travel Texts: Finish a task, and send a future “thank-you” or motivational message to yourself or a flatmate.
Discounts on Errands: Tick off tasks like grocery runs or coffee stops to unlock discounts with partnered businesses. Who said chores couldn’t pay?
Mood-Driven Reminders: Hate being bossed around? Fine! Pick a tone: friendly, encouraging, or mildly threatening.
Location-Based Icons: Set recurring reminders for common places like home, work, or the coffee shop—no typing required.