StudyNow

A handy tool to help you find the best study spot for maximum productivity!

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Inspiration

From personal experiences, we realized that all students will have trouble finding a vacant study spot that matches each and everyones unique preferences. In previous study terms especially with everyone back in-person from COVID, our team members would always have trouble finding study spots on our campus in certain times of the day. We would waste lots of time searching between different buildings, not knowing whether or not a study spot is available. We want to make it easy for students to discover new study spaces or to plan ahead so that they can get the study spot they want for maximum productivity!

What it does

StudyNow is a community driven platform, giving users a quick and easy way to check for the live status and information of study spaces, without having to waste commute time. It provides user authentication and an interactive map to check and interact with the statuses of study spots near them. Users can contribute to the accessibility and real-time availability, and may view detailed information like noise-level and the layout of the study spot. Study Now also prototypes a gamification system for users, to encourage users to contribute. This includes a user level based on the number of reviews submitted and badges for achievements (ex. Study guide badge for submitting a review at all the study spots in a College campus).

How we built it

StudyNow is built using several technologies and frameworks. We used HTML, CSS, Javascript, Node.js, React.js, Bootstrap, and Vite.js as the primary building blocks of our front-end, along with Firebase for authentication and the Google Maps Javascript API for our map functionality as our back-end.

Challenges we ran into

We chose to dive straight into the fire as none of our team members had any experience using Javascript libraries to develop Web Applications. It was everyone's first time using React.js, Firebase, and Google Maps API, hence there was a long ramp-up period in the beginning for our team. We ran into plenty of syntax issues, merge conflicts, connecting each web page, deployment failures,
... you name it, we probably came across.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of the process we took to create this project. We were able to take an idea that we were passionate about, and create it with tools that we have never worked with. We were also able to take the user interface and experience into consideration, maximizing readability and the aesthetic. We were able to plan, design, execute, and finish our project with pride in less than 24 hours!

However... the best accomplishment collectively as a team, was for all of us to step out of our comfort zone with the technologies and build something we were able to resonate with!

What we learned

We were able to learn on a basic level of Product management, and pretty much our entire tech stack for our App! The team members that had experience with mainly backend contributed a lot to the front end, and the members that had experience with front end contributed to the back end. Everyone stepped out of their comfort zone, and experienced new domains of software development.

What's next for StudyNow

We truly believe StudyNow solves a real problem, and we plan on continuing our project by completing the features from our brainstorm. We plan on adding more powerful features in our app such as:

  • Notification system (notify upon arrival of a study spot) to boost participation in review submissions
  • Community platform to find other study buddies
  • A verification algorithm to verify newly added locations

... and continue to improve our current features by:

  • Adding the database implementation to scale our app to cover different colleges/locations
  • Adding unique descriptions for different study spots
  • Provide animations and page transitions to smoothen user experience
  • Turn our mobile-friendly web app into Android and iOS applications
  • Power outlet availability
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