study-together-app
lets start a study session
The problem study-together-app solves
The Study Together app solves the problem of isolation and lack of accountability while studying. Many students struggle with distractions, low motivation, and difficulty coordinating with peers when studying remotely. Our app provides virtual study rooms where students can connect, collaborate in real-time, and stay focused together — just like studying in a library, but online.
Challenges we ran into
While building the Study Together app, I ran into a few key challenges:
Real-time Collaboration:
Implementing live study rooms with features like shared notes, chat, and video calls required managing WebRTC and Socket.IO for seamless peer-to-peer communication. Ensuring low latency and stable connections across different networks was tricky.
Time Constraints:
Since hackathons are fast-paced, we had to prioritize features. We initially aimed to add more advanced tools but had to focus on the core study-room functionality first to deliver a working prototype.
UI/UX Balance:
Designing an interface that felt both minimal and engaging was a challenge. We wanted students to feel focused, not distracted, so balancing productivity tools with simplicity took extra iterations.
Team Coordination:
With limited time, dividing work between frontend, backend, and integration was tough. We overcame this by setting small milestones and syncing regularly.
Unexpected Bugs:
Live collaboration brought synchronization bugs (e.g., chat messages or notes not appearing instantly). Debugging under time pressure was stressful, but it taught us to test iteratively instead of waiting until the end.
Technologies used