Quest

Summer and Fall 2020

Made With: HTML/CSS/JS, NodeJS, Adobe Illustrator

Quest is an proof-of-concept app I made to help people build healthy habits. Quest gives you a few quests per day which you can complete in exchange for points. The quests it gives you are all things that are good for you in some way, whether mentally, socially, or physically. Tasks include “Take a Walk,” “Cook a Healthy Meal,” “Learn a new Word,” and many more.

One of the aspects of Quest that I thought was important was being aware of the user’s situation. This is exemplified in the hide system. A user can hide a task for any reason, but if they hide it for a reason that was foreseen (ex. hiding “Take a Walk” due to limited mobility), then the app can help them with what they probably want to do (ex. hide the other similar physical journey tasks).

I also added bonus tasks which are time based. The two major bonus tasks implemented were “Wish [Friend Name] a Happy Birthday” and “Register to Vote” / “Vote!” When using the app, the user would enter their friend’s/family’s birthdays and Quest would remind them on the day of. The bonus quests arrive in addition to the user’s normal quests.

Finally, the points can be redeemed for cosmetic changes to the app. The points system adds an aspect of gamification that hopefully would make users want to keep returning to the app and consequently keep building the healthy habits.

The app was implemented as a web app, but as a native app, it could take advantage of many system integrations. For example, walking a certain distance might auto-complete the “Take a Walk” task. The app could also pull birthdays directly from the user’s contacts app instead of having to re-enter them.

Quest was my second submission (and RI-01’s winning entry in 2020) to the Congressional App Challenge (my entry the previous year was Tome).