My Personal Project, First Pitch

Problem and Origin

Growing up as a kid, I’ve always had the problem of staying focused and on task when I am studying. Often, what I will do is study for 30-40 minutes and then play games for the next 2 hours. As you could tell, as I got older and my workload got heavier, this became a problem that I would have to solve sometime down the road. So, when I was told we were going to do a personal project for Fusion, I thought to myself, “This is the perfect opportunity for me to try and fix this issue,” and so, that’s how I thought of the idea of my personal project.

Definition Statement

To improve the effectiveness and efficiency of my studying, I need to develop a comprehensive system that supports both planning and focus. The system should help me stay on task by providing reminders or progress tracking, allowing me to schedule study sessions at optimal times, and adapting to different study methods and preferences. Additionally, it should be flexible enough to accommodate not only my own learning style but also the needs and habits of other users, making it a personalized and collaborative tool for more productive and organized studying.

Target Audience

I’m not sure who else specifically this is going to be made for. However, I’m sure there are people out there who have the same problem as I do. For example, I have friends and people I know who will not prepare for a test until the day before it’s going to happen. As a result, they will end up bombing the test and then saying, “Man, I wish I had studied last week”. Thus, the target audience for this project is going to be people who have a low level of self-discipline and have trouble managing their time and staying on task for learning.

Ideas that I had

I think I first had intention to solve this problem when I was entering grade 8, as that’s when the work level really stepped up from grade 7. However, at that time, I didn’t have a lot of the skills that would allow me to formulate a good solution for this problem. The first sort of idea I had when trying to solve this problem was just a simple Google sheet. The idea was that I would just write down what upcoming tests or assignments I needed to study for and finish, and when I was done with something, I would just cross out the task. And this worked! for about 3 days. After this first idea, I tried to use a different solution. I tried writing it out on Google Docs, setting times on Google Calendar, and I even bought an actual calendar to see if it would be better as a physical product. Overall, none of these ideas really lasted and helped me to solve my problem. However, through these ideas, I learned one thing about myself: I am not good at reminding myself what to do. And thus, I’ve come up with an idea that I think will finally, once and for all, solve this problem.

Prototype

Growing up in the generation that we are in, we have so much access to the internet and apps like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Personally, I don’t use any of these apps because I think they are pointless, but I do use an app called Discord. One similarity between Discord and the apps that I brought up is that they make this “ding!” sound whenever you get a message. And people from our generation cannot resist the temptation of checking their phones when they hear that sound. It’s the sense of not missing out on a conversation between friends, it’s like a mouse seeing a block of cheese, it’s irresistible! So, using that idea, the protype i’m going to be making a program that will make a “ding!” sound whenever you need to study succesfully alrerting you and getting your attention.

The reason I am not making an app is that, given the time, I not only currently don’t have the skills to build an app, but I also have very limited time to test the app and see if it works or not. As a result, I’m going to build a more computer simulation program to try to achieve a similar result.

FEATURES OF THIS PROTOTYPE

1. The program has a calendar system where the user can put down when an assignment or test is due and for how long they need to work on or study for it.
   • The program will then help the user set a timer at the time they want to study and send a notification to alert the user that it’s time to work.
2. The program can help keep track of your grades by just having the user write down the grades they got on a test or an assignment. This allows the user to see their growth in real time, and it helps keep them motivated.
3. To help you stay focused when studying, the program will give you breaks in between study sessions. For example, if you set a study time for 90 minutes, then the program might give you 20 minutes of break time in between.
   • During that 20 minutes, the Program will give you some suggestions like: Walk around, go outside for some fresh air, eat a snack, don’t scroll on your phone, etc.
   • Another idea I was thinking of is a rewards system. For example, if you complete your studying task, you can get points, and once you have enough points, you can do a sort of gacha pull for collectibles.

SURVERY

To see some study methods that work/fail from my fellow students, I ran a survey on a total of 16 students here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ovfxumscf5p29kgY3jKkbmixHWBGB6_iLiomPfz32KY/edit?tab=t.0

Plan for Creating the Program

To create this program, we have around 2 months of time before it is due. Im gonna use the website called Notion to make a to-do list with dates that I’m gonna meet to have enough time to finish everything. I will update the status as I work on the project to help me keep track of my progress and stay organized

Todo List