Zot Major | Devpost

Inspiration

Our inspiration was students who are unsure about their futures and for those who would like more clarity. This come from our own experience of being in one major and wanting to do other majors. There are many majors and possible careers one can pursue, but it isn't apparent what each one is or what they entail. Without having a complete picture of the academic landscape it impedes an individual from making a suitable decision about their future.

What it does

Zot Major offers a user-friendly interface to explore majors that are offered to a university student. The web app starts from an individual's general point of interest and gradually narrows the focus to something that the person would be satisfied studying. As the user navigates through the options, they will encounter the key bits of information as well as carefully curated data (e.g. video and etc.) to gain a richer understanding of a major.

How we built it

The frontend was built using React, which is a popular framework. We also used javascript to add responsiveness to the web app and CSS for the styling. The frontend was created in an iterative process that took into account new ideas and limitations. And the backend was created with Python and Flask which allowed for a quick solution in response to the time constraint.

Challenges we ran into

The first challenge was to come up with an idea that we could possibly create. Then came the trying task of putting things on the screen and retrieving information from an API and having the essential information to display. Since the team did not have extensive prior knowledge of building a web app, it was difficult to understand how everything worked together and there was a lot of trial and error to get the project to function. Also, there was the problem of connecting the frontend and the backend. Essentially, there was a lot of debugging and a lot to learn crammed in a short amount of time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of coming together as a team and creating a project from scratch. In spite of the failures, set backs, and headaches, we persisted and were able to make pages with components in the frontend and successfully interacted with the API. The frontend and backend worked up until the end debugging and trying different code to make the project successful.

What we learned

We learned about some of the intricacies of web development, coming up with an idea, and working with different languages and technologies to make our idea a reality. And we picked up a few tricks along the way and gained a better understanding of how to use the technology we employed. We also learned how to use GitHub, work with an API, style using CSS, create components in React, coordinate efforts and etc.

What's next for Zot Major

Zot Major will incorporate more data and be made more adaptable to the needs of the user. It will be enhanced by AI technology and employ comprehensive algorithms to give the user invaluable information and insight.