A Better Summer

This project began with a problem I saw among teenagers during school breaks: daily routines often collapsed, study habits became harder to maintain, and long stretches of free time could create feelings of emptiness and disconnection.

Our goal was to build a platform that could help teenagers create meaningful goals, introduce small changes into repetitive days, record their experiences, and stay connected with others.

The project began at the 2025 Handong University High School HTHT Hackathon, where we developed the idea and an MVP. It later continued as a deeper research project at our school's academic festival.

We surveyed 68 students from grades 7 through 12. About 80% reported experiencing feelings of emptiness or disconnection during school breaks.

Their responses pointed to several recurring causes: repetitive daily routines, a lack of communication with others, and the absence of concrete goals or a sense of achievement.

This changed how we approached the problem. Instead of building another productivity tool focused only on studying, we began thinking about four ideas together: connection, recording, achievement, and unusual activities that could add variation to an otherwise repetitive day.

We wanted participation to feel voluntary and enjoyable rather than forced. One idea was to recommend small, unusual activities such as reading on a bus or writing at a café—simple changes that could interrupt repetitive routines.

We also decided against an open-chat structure with large groups of strangers. We thought that could create a higher barrier to communication, so we designed a community-code system that would allow users to form safer, more intentional groups.

One of the most important moments came when our original development approach stopped working. We had planned to build the application with FlutterFlow, but its learning curve and functional limitations made it difficult to continue as planned.

Rather than remaining attached to the original tool, we switched to Firebase Studio. That decision allowed us to move from a prototype toward a working implementation of the onboarding process and core features.

Our team also changed from five members to three during the hackathon. Adapting to both the smaller team and a new development environment became an important part of the experience.

The project showed me that building something does not always mean following the original plan. Sometimes progress depends on recognizing when an approach is not working and changing it.

After the hackathon, I continued the project through the school academic festival. The focus expanded from building features to asking why those features might matter.

I reviewed academic literature related to adolescent well-being during school breaks. The research suggested that negative and positive emotional experiences within particular activity contexts may matter more than the amount of time spent studying or relaxing by itself.

I also examined research on self-esteem and peer attachment. Higher peer attachment was associated with higher self-esteem and acted as an important protective factor against adolescent depression. This provided a research basis for exploring recording, sharing, and group communication as central parts of the platform.

Alongside the literature review, I analyzed our survey results and ten existing productivity applications to develop hypotheses about the platform's user experience.

The next stage is to develop the Figma and Firebase Studio MVP further and conduct beta testing with students at my school.

The plan is to use pre- and post-surveys and in-depth interviews to examine changes in users' feelings of emptiness and their ability to achieve goals during the break.

Feedback from this testing would then be used to refine the system into a v3.0 structure designed with users beyond the school community in mind.