auxilium

COVID-19 related support, all at your fingertips.

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Inspiration

Needless to say, the COVID-19 pandemic has made life a lot harder for all of us (i.e. people losing jobs, people can’t socialize in public, and people are dying). Nonprofits are giving free stuff away and hosting online events in lieu of COVID, but people aren’t aware of them. Social media can promote free stuff/giveaway events from nonprofits, but it’s hard for these posts to effectively reach the right audience because they are buried under social posts.

Our solution

We decided that a platform that selectively shows charitable events, giveaways, and other covid-related assistance/help in Sacramento is needed.

What it does

Auxilium is a stand-alone website that shows free resources and services from nonprofits in the Sacramento area. As a participant, you can pick up free resources from physical locations within your county or attend online events hosted by any nonprofit. As an event host, you can post events held safely in-person or online that supports the local community of Sacramento.

How we built it

We built this project through low-and high-fidelity prototyping on Figma, vector illustrations on Adobe Illustrator, presentation visuals on Adobe InDesign, and frontend on React and backend on NodeJS.

Challenges we ran into

Originally, we were a team of four with two designers and two developers. However, due to communication issues between one developer and the rest of the team, our programmer had to take the task of coding an entire website that was originally planned to be coded by two people.

This hackathon was held remotely due to the limitations posed by COVID-19. Because of this, it took longer for us to communicate with each other. Because of this, conveying and aligning ideas with one another took a little longer than it would’ve been in-person.

In terms of our project, we worked with the skills and time we had available. We couldn’t participate in all tracks as our skillset couldn’t meet all the minimum requirements (i.e. Best IBM Z, Best Data Science). This website is intended to exist on the Internet for people to use; however we’re launching it without running usability testing to ensure the website is functional.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Each part of this project was executed with careful consideration to our potential users. With auxilium, our brand name, meaning “support” in Latin, we designed the website with a people-centered mindset. We’re proud that we somehow made this project happen, even in the midst of limitations posed by COVID-19! Everyone shared the same passion for providing the community with support during such a troubling time.

What we learned

Some of the valuable knowledge we gained from this project include: Thinking in the perspective of potential different users—broadening our perspective to cater to all demographics Ensuring a welcoming design through cross-testing of different colors to ensure that visually impaired people can access the website and its content Giving each other objective, constructive feedback Communication between designers & the programmer to maximize efficiency in a limited timeframe Having fun and enjoying whatever the hackathon throws at you :)

What's next for auxilium

We hope to have nonprofits and community members use this platform so we would run some usability testing and iterate based on our findings. Updated Styles for responsive design on all platforms ( designed for 1920x940 browser, ‘firefox’ ) more complex and useful firebase interactions more intuitive/ fulfilling user flow

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