TaskMate

Project introduction

TaskMate is a new way to incentivize children and young adults to look forward to their daily tasks. Most task completion apps are variations on the same thing: a list, however pretty, of things one needs to complete. When one is presented with this standard list, one sees their day as a drab succession of chores, and no one is more negatively impacted by this than a child. This dilemma was further worsened by COVID-19, in which more parents needed to rely on task completion software to get their many kids to complete their many chores without adult supervision.

Enter TaskMate. With our app, a child can enter their tasks for the day, and an interactive pirate map is generated before their eyes. This child can specify the task’s ideal completion time and any links or notes needed for its completion. The child can change their pirate ship, or even use a spaceship to navigate the generated map, and can also receive notifications to remind them to complete their tasks before a certain interval. TaskMate was designed with children in mind, including bright colors and a unique pirate theme, while also incorporating sophisticated task completion functionality that even adults can get behind. With TaskMate, your tasks are no longer chores: they are an adventure.

Issue/Inspiration

• COVID-19 caused the need for parents to keep track of their kids at home, while balancing work. It’s hard to get kids to concentrate on boring things like chores & school while lacking adult supervision.
• Most task completion apps are rather boring lists. Kids can’t get behind this.
• TaskMate was envisioned as an app that turns tasks into a “pirate map,” where there is a “treasure” of being done at the end. You can watch as your ship navigates a kid-friendly pirate map as you complete tasks.

What it does

TaskMate offers an easy interface for kids to enter the tasks they need to complete for the day, including the due time and notes. Then, a pirate map is generated with different “stops” for their different tasks. They have a pirate ship that moves between the “stops” as they complete tasks, and once they complete all their tasks, they receive the “treasure” at the end of the quest.

How did your project evolve with the support of the COVID-19 Hackathon Fund by Google Cloud?

The support of the COVID-19 Hackathon Fund allowed us to experiment with powerful technologies like Firebase Realtime Database, Google Cloud Storage, and AI Insights to make an ambitious first version of the app that gave different experiences for children and adults. We used these technologies to create a sophisticated system of communication between parents and children, to allow the parent to manage their kids from afar, and for the kids to focus on map completion, which is the core offering of our product.

How you built it

UI was designed using Figma, and implemented in React Native. For our first version, we used Firebase Realtime Database to handle database communications, Firebase Cloud Messaging to provide users with notifications, and several other Google technologies listed in the “Google Cloud products” section below. In our App Store beta version, we mostly just incorporate the core functionality in a simple React Native app.

(We used YouTube Music and the ancient East African technology Coffee to actually get through the dozens of hours of coding.)

Challenges you ran into

Our initial plan for the app was overly ambitious. Though we got a prototype working, there were just too many bugs and issues with it to run with the fully-featured version, so we decided to release a stripped-down version to the App Store that contained our favorite parts from the initial plan.

Accomplishments you are proud of

• We released Version 1.0 to the App Store - TaskMatey.
  • This is a stripped-down version of the original app, which included parent & child communication as well as more sophisticated AI-derived insights.
• In our original version, we allowed for parent-child communication using literal QR Codes to connect to each other, which was pretty fun.

What you learned

• Try not to be too ambitious in your app design if you don’t have too many people that will be able to code it.
• React Native is actually a blast to develop in. It’s pretty intuitive, has excellent documentation, and features actually port really well across devices. However, it’s hard to give your app a UI that conforms to the standard UI expectations of both Android and iOS. You kind of need to have a preference for one or the other, unless you want to a) create your own, or b) mix and match different elements from each that you like.
• A flat structure of pages, components, and assets work well for app development. Our initial file structure was overly complex and hierarchical.

What’s next for your project

We hope to improve upon the current version in the App Store with custom (and better) art, better ship movement functionality, and spicier animations. We think it has the potential to actually become a viable task management app. We would also like the ability for the user to specify their “treasure” at the end of the map, to provide kids with more of an incentive to complete all their tasks. We also think it would be cool to market this a bit, perhaps on Facebook and Youtube Kids.

What Google Cloud products did you use to build your project?

• Firebase Realtime Database: for storing user information, connecting parent information to the child, and collecting analytics data.
• Firebase Cloud Messaging: for push notifications.
• Cloud Storage: for allowing the child to upload images to prove to their parent(s) they did chores.
• Cloud Functions: for encapsulating complex logic.
• Firebase Authentication
• AI Platform & AI Platform Notebooks: for AI insights on child behavior.