CanYouHelpWithMy.Tech

Our goal is to reduce technological barriers by offering free workshops and immediate 1-1 support through our website, especially to marginalized groups and underprivileged members of society.

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Inspiration

We've all had that experience with our parents and grandparents asking us for help with the computer or smartphone, especially being at home in the pandemic with most meetings being virtual. This brought to mind the technological barriers between us and the older generation, as well as more so with lower socioeconomic groups who may not have access to the same privileges we have. Thus we got to thinking how can we increase accessibility of technology, and an idea is that people would need immediate help and would prefer an interface where they can talk to someone, but also more comprehensive educational materials are available to learn the technologies. Since what older people generally ask is 'can you help me with [insert technological issue]', the idea of CanYouHelpWith.Tech website was born.

What it does

Our website has 4 main functions:

  1. offer immediate tech support through search options to narrow your problem and video call and chat with our volunteers 24/7,
  2. provide free live and recorded educational workshops to the general public,
  3. become a volunteer and
  4. make a donation.

How we built it

Prototyping: Figma

Website:

  • React web app
  • Node.js
  • JavaScript, CSS, HTML
  • Google Calendar API
  • Goggle Auth2 User login
  • Google Speech to text API that utilizes ML
  • Twilio API
  • Heroku Deployment
  • Domain.com for a custom domain

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge was that most of our teammates haven’t used the technologies such as React, Twilio and Google Authorization before, so we had to learn these as we used them. As expected, some errors also came up when running the code, which we discussed and worked through together to solve. Another issue that came up was with typescript files interfering with the javascript files, but this was resolved by removing the typescript.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Built a mostly functional website!
  • Learned React and Twilio
  • Utilized features of Google Calendar, Google Speech to text and Twilio video call and chat

What we learned

  • How to build a website
  • New Technologies: React, Twilio, Google technologies API
  • How to merge conflicts with Git

What's next for CanYouHelpWithMy.Tech

  • Text-to-speech to aid those with vision issues
  • Continue fixing bugs
  • Optimize/update UI
  • Recruit volunteers
  • Advertising
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