By the end of Phase I, we had research findings, survey results, interview notes, meeting notes and ideas scattered across notebooks, Google Docs, and different folders.
We realized we needed more than a place to store files. We needed a place that told the story of the project.
This website isn't meant to be a portfolio or a showcase. It's a record of how our thinking evolves as we move from questions to research, and eventually to building and testing.
As we begin Phase II, we'll continue documenting the questions we ask, the decisions we make, and the evidence behind them.
Our hope is that, by the time Project Cognify is complete, someone can read these pages from beginning to end and understand not only what we built, but why we built it.
How the Research Changed Our Hypothesis
By this point, we had completed our literature review and collected responses from our student survey. As we looked at everything together, one pattern kept appearing.
Our original hypothesis focused heavily on FOMO. But the research pointed us toward something broader.
Words like motivation, social presence, and accountability showed up repeatedly, both in the academic literature and in what students shared with us. The more evidence we gathered, the more we realized our original question might have been too narrow.
Instead of asking,
Can FOMO help students stay focused?
we found ourselves asking a different question:
Can simply knowing that other students are working alongside you make it easier to stay engaged?
That became the focus of our next phase of research.
One thing we've learned so far is that research isn't about proving your original idea. It's about following the evidence, even when it leads you somewhere unexpected.
This became our second hypothesis.
What We Found in the Survey Findings
After weeks of preparation, our survey finally went live.
This was the first time we were hearing perspectives beyond our own.
Some responses confirmed what we expected. Others challenged our assumptions completely.
Many students described procrastination in ways we hadn't considered. Some said they lost focus because they felt overwhelmed or didn't know where to start. Others told us they actually focused better when they knew their friends were studying at the same time, even if they weren't studying together.
The more responses we read, the less interested we became in proving our original hypothesis.
Instead, we found ourselves asking better questions and trying to understand what was really happening.
Why We Started Sharing Everything
One question we kept asking ourselves was whether we should wait until we had results before talking about the project.
In the end, we decided not to.
We started our Instagram because we wanted to document the whole process, not just the finished product. That means sharing the questions we're asking, the ideas that don't work out, the things that surprise us, and the moments that change how we think.
Research doesn't always go the way you expect. Sometimes you end up with a completely different question than the one you started with, and that's part of the process.
Project Cognify is about learning. We think sharing that learning is just as important as whatever we end up building.
Hopefully, by sharing our journey, other students can follow along, learn something new, or maybe even get inspired to start a project of their own.
Designing the Survey
Designing a survey turned out to be much harder than we expected.
Writing questions isn't difficult. Writing questions that don't accidentally push people toward a particular answer is.
Every time we thought we had a good question, we'd realize it assumed something we hadn't actually proven yet.
Around the same time, we started meeting regularly as a team. I drafted the survey questions, and Jeremy and Ryan gave input that sharpened them. Weekly discussions became less about assigning work and more about challenging each other's assumptions before moving forward.
The project started feeling less like an idea and more like a real research study.
Choosing Research Before Building
Like most student projects, our first instinct was to start making a product.
Idle, action, puzzle, strategy, plenty of fun game ideas came to mind.
But we realized that without a confirmed problem, none of those ideas would go anywhere.
So we made a decision that has influenced every step since: we wouldn't build anything until we had spent time understanding the problem first.
That meant reading existing research, designing surveys, conducting interviews, and letting the evidence shape whatever came next, even when the research wasn't fun.
Looking back, this was probably the most important decision we made.
Giving the Project a Name
For the first few weeks, we called it Project Focus. Whenever we talked about it, we just called it "the focus project."
As the idea became more defined, we realized it deserved its own identity.
After brainstorming a long list of possibilities, Jeremy brought up the idea and we landed on Project Cognify. We liked that it reflected what we were trying to understand. Not just productivity, but how people think, focus, and stay engaged.
Around the same time, Jeremy also designed our first logo.
For the first time, the project felt real.
It no longer felt like an interesting idea we talked about after school. It felt like something we were genuinely committed to building, researching, and sharing with others.
That was the moment we realized Project Cognify had become more than a conversation. It had become something worth investing our time in.
Getting the Team Together
I knew I wanted to work with a team.
Jeremy and Ryan had worked with me during a game jam the previous year. We approached problems differently, but we worked well together. More importantly, everyone was willing to challenge ideas instead of simply agreeing with them.
When I shared the idea behind Project Cognify, neither of them asked what app we were going to build.
They asked what we actually knew.
It turned out the honest answer was "not much."
In that moment, I knew they understood.
That conversation ended up shaping the project more than any feature discussion we had afterward.
Was It Worth Investigating?
It was just an idea at first.
Over time I started to consider it more and more until it eventually became something I wanted to do something about.
Because of this new desire for action I started reading about attention, motivation, and the fear of missing out. My first hypothesis slowly took shape.
What if the same psychological forces that keep people engaged in games could also be used to help students stay focused while learning?
The hypothesis felt right at the time, but I had to make sure it was correct.
How It All Started
Project Cognify started with a game night.
One night, Jeremy and I stayed up until 2 AM playing a newly released game. Afterward, I kept thinking about how those hours had just disappeared. Hours of studying never felt like that.
Why do some things hold our attention effortlessly, while others take everything we have?
That question was probably the moment Project Cognify started.