Since the start of this school year, our school has had a ‘Jugend forscht’ club. Our teachers, Ms Doleski and Ms Sievering, told us about the club and the competition, and we decided to take part.
At the start, we didn’t have a concrete plan. But then we came up with the idea of creating an app that motivates children and teenagers to help out around the house. This idea arose from our own experiences, as housework is often seen as a nuisance, whilst at the same time we enjoy playing games. That’s why we wanted to combine housework and gaming. We’d also been interested in developing an app ourselves for quite some time. As we don’t know how to code yet, we worked with the AI Base44. First, we had a basic framework created by describing to the AI, using prompts, what our app should look like and what it should be able to do. We then expanded the prototype step by step. This led to some errors, which we had to correct by providing more precise input.
In our app, parents can enter tasks such as ‘empty the dishwasher’. Once completed, the parents confirm the task and the child receives points (XP) that can be exchanged for rewards. These include, for example, avatars like in video games or real-life rewards such as an ice cream. Additionally, small mini-games such as a daily wheel of fortune provide extra fun and motivation.
We won the Emsland regional competition in Lingen with our project and also won a special prize, which then qualified us for the state competition in Einbeck. There, we were among the top 8 out of a total of 134 projects in the ‘Working World’ category in our age group. Only two projects from the Emsland region were represented, and ours was the only one to win a prize.
We are particularly proud that we have achieved all this in a relatively short time since October 2025. In the future, we would like to further develop and release our app. We are also planning additional features, such as a homework manager, to help young people organise their daily lives even better and boost their motivation.
Text: Jonte Krieger and Vincent Bruns, Photos: Spieker Fotografie
