Breadcrumbs

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  Here is a snippet of the cookie that we are so proud of :)

Inspiration

We've traveled with travel guides in the past, and the schedule imposed is usually so rushed it is hard to truly enjoy the beauty of the new city. Last semester, Giuseppe and I went to Quebec City, Canada, and got to explore the city on our own terms. It was a great experience and we wanted to build something that will enable more people to be a tourist in the true sense. We decided that taking random yet informed detours to see interesting places is a great way to explore a new city and so we built breadcrumbs!

The name comes from the idea that you are following a breadcrumb trail along the city, while also taking in its beauty.

What it does

The website provides you with a list of nearby landmarks of interest according to your preferences. You can browse through the information, and choose the one you want to visit. It will then help you navigate there, give you information about the venue. When done, it will provide a new set of interesting landmarks, and so on.

How we built it

We used Python Flask as the backend, which serves the static files for the SPA, and interfaces with the OpenTripMap API, which is our main source of data. For the frontend, we used Vue.js with vue-router to enable a smooth SPA experience, and speed up our development by reusing components. We also used leaflet.js, which uses data from the OpenStreetMap project. We are thankful for these open-source projects that let us focus on the experience we were trying to build.

Challenges we ran into

Both of us came to this hackathon to learn, so we picked technologies that were at the edge of our comfort zone. This lead to some technical frustrations, but it also prepared us for other hackathons we intend to attend. For example, passing data between components Vue is a different model than we are used to, and deploying Flask on to a webserver was a new experience for us.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

During the midnight cookie cooking event, we didn't exactly fail the recipe. Yet, our cookies were still delicious. We're proud that we successfully navigated a detour from the recipe, had a lot of fun, and still got to our destination. Does that ring a bell with the purpose of our website?

What we learned

In Giuseppe's 2nd and my 1st hackathon, we learned a lot about what it takes to have fun during a hackathon while also coming up with a product we are proud of. It goes without saying that we learned a lot technically, but most importantly, we learned how fun hackathons can be!

What's next for Breadcrumbs

We have already published Breadcrumbs to a public domain, and the mentors we talked to encouraged us to work on the project moving forward. We intend to keep hacking on this project and hopefully publish on Product Hunt. We want to let people leave reviews for the locations they visit, and we want to improve our data source to include restaurants. Most importantly, we want to get feedback from actual users and build what they want.

Built With

• bulma
• flask
• leaflet.js
• openstreetmap
• opentripmap
• python
• vue