HUNNiE Language Learning App Development

Erin was a Duolingo global ambassador who helped people speak twelve languages in her time hosting events. She found that all people had the same problem: they did not use the language in their daily life. She eventually developed the 100 Day Challenge to help mitigate that but a new problem arose, it became difficult to track everyone’s language progress as they were at different levels and learning for different reasons. That is when she began ideating HUNNiE, a way to help you learn a language by actually using it throughout your day.

A built-in progress tracker monitors user performance, completion streaks, and growth in comprehension and speaking confidence. It provides real-time insights, reminders, and motivational feedback, helping learners stay accountable and engaged throughout the challenge. HUNNiE is ideal for students, professionals, and teams aiming to build practical language skills through structured, adaptive learning.

Using Amazon Q developer, we made the user interface of the app, that shows a progress bar, accomplishments, and a chat bot, and a checklist of items to do that day.

Throughout development, our team encountered a variety of technical and coordination challenges. One major hurdle was version control with Git—some team members had difficulty pushing and pulling changes, which slowed integration and collaboration.

We also ran into issues with token limits for free-tier APIs and services, which affected backend testing and functionality. On top of that, inconsistencies in local environments caused compatibility issues: some members didn’t have Node.js installed, and others had trouble getting the backend to read or serve files correctly due to system-level differences.

These problems made it difficult to connect the frontend, backend, and AI services in real time, and forced us to frequently troubleshoot deployment and environment mismatches. Despite this, we worked through these roadblocks and still created a solid MVP of the HUNNiE app.

One of our biggest accomplishments is that we successfully created an app with a clean, intuitive interface—something that wasn’t easy to achieve at first. Early on, we struggled to agree on the design and layout, and some team members had difficulty visualizing how the user interface should look. But by actively building and testing the app, we eventually arrived at a simple, functional design that makes the user journey clear and accessible from the start.

We’re also especially proud of our team communication. Two of our participants were fully virtual, and despite the technical and logistical challenges, we kept everyone engaged and coordinated. The collaboration helped us stay on track and push through blockers together.

This hackathon was a huge learning experience for all of us. One of the biggest takeaways was learning how to work with unfamiliar tools and technologies. For example, some of us had never touched Git, Amazon Q, or Cursor before this project—and now we’ve used them to build an actual app. We also got hands-on experience with Ubuntu, and explored the capabilities of platforms like Google Gemini and Perplexity, which opened our eyes to how much is possible when combining AI with practical app development.

Beyond the tech, we also learned the value of collaboration across different skill sets. Each team member brought something unique to the table, and sometimes that meant learning to communicate with people who had completely different ways of thinking. That experience made the project stronger and helped us grow—not just as developers, but as collaborators and creative problem solvers.

Moving forward, I want to continue learning and building. This experience gave me the confidence to work with tools I once found intimidating, and now I’m excited to deepen my understanding of development platforms, APIs, and interface design. I plan to optimize the UI, explore different API integrations, and find the best solutions to bring out the full potential of this app.

This project isn’t just a hackathon idea—it’s part of a real company I’ve been developing for years, and seeing it come to life in a tangible way was incredibly motivating. I’m proud of how far it’s come and even more excited about where it can go. This is just the beginning, and I’m fully committed to making HUNNiE a functional, impactful tool for language learning.