Submitted to HackBytes II (2023) and winner
The team was inspired to create PennyWise due to the prevailing numbers of students seen on a daily basis that struggle with their finances and not knowing where or what their money is spent on. We saw this as an opportunity to create PennyWise in order to help students make informed financial decisions.
PennyWise is designed to be your next best friend who helps you keep track of your expenses as well as stay on track your spending, where you are spending it and help you stay within your financial budget.
PennyWise helps students stay above their finances in terms of creating a platform that they can use to track all their expenses and income budget. It also ensures that students stay within their student.
We were heavily inspired by the revised version of Double Diamond design process, which not only includes visual design, but a full-fledged research cycle in which you must discover and define your problem before tackling your solution & then finally deploy it.
- Discover: a deep dive into the problem we are trying to solve.
- Define: synthesizing the information from the discovery phase into a problem definition.
- Develop: think up solutions to the problem.
- Deliver: pick the best solution and build that.
PennyWise was designed using hand-drawn wireframes and the work was then split into frontend and backend, with each teammate working on a particular feature.
- Qoom
- HTML
- CSS3
- JavaScript
Our proudest achievement was being able to use Qoom as our platform even though it was the first time using it. We were also able to ensure that the webapp works according to what we had set out; be able to track your expenses.
The biggest challenge that the team encountered was in trying to use Qoom for the first time. We also had to find alternative ways of collaborating on Qoom platform. The other challenge was in terms of the different timezones each teammate is in.
Throughout this project, the team experienced significant personal and professional growth:
- Technical Skill Expansion: Each member acquired new technical skills, ranging from programming languages to design tools, enhancing their expertise in the field.
- Behavioral Competency Development: Collaborating on PennyWise fostered crucial behavioral skills such as communication, teamwork, leadership, and adaptability. Embracing diverse perspectives and open-mindedness were key lessons learned in achieving shared objectives.
Despite the initial challenges faced in the development of PennyWise, the team is dedicated to ensuring that College and University students will have a platform to use in order to track their expenses. The team plans on developing a mobile application to run side-by-side with the webapp.
