ClearSky Travelytics

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  Screenshot of application

Inspiration

Vehicle emissions account for a large percentage of North America's yearly carbon dioxide emissions. However, despite many efforts in the past, people remain reluctant to proactively make even small contributions to this generational issue. We believe that this lack of proactivity is due to a lack of reliable metrics to inform people about the changes they are able to enact upon their livlihoods to improve the world. To help people better visualize the changes they are capable of, we were inspired to create our DeltaHacks project.

What it does

ClearSky Travelytics is a travel companion that grants insightful information about travel routes. Beyond just location data, Travelytics shares detailed information to promote good health and well being as well as environmental stewardship. Our vision is to provide travelers with a convenient way to analyze their carbon footprint along with various other greenhouse gas metrics accrued throughout their journey. Additionally, Travelytics encourages users to proactively seek a healthier lifestyle by demonstrating how walking and cycling can be an effective form of exercise, posing the question: "does practicing environmental mindfulness necessarily have to come as a disadvantage to yourself?"

How we built it

We used the Google Maps API platform to create a Progressive Web App along with basic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We chose Google Maps because we knew that we would need to retrieve location data in order to plot trips for our users, calculate various environmental and wellness metrics, and display a map of the overall route. After discussing relevant features and the tools we wanted to use, we set off creating a simple prototype of our web app's design, building up important features one at a time. Eventually, we were able to produce a solid final iteration of the app after major reworks, and we used Google Firebase to host our app online.

Challenges we ran into

One of the most difficult challenges we ran into was decyphering the Google Maps API documentation. We had great trouble interpreting the code demos made available to us, and many times we felt that we found seemingly blatant contradictions and impossibilities. Our team was able to come up with the idea for our project very early on, but we were unable to quickly agree upon a final design which met all our expectations. Only in the very end, did we produce something we are proud to display.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of coming together to work together on an ambitious project, despite the fact that none of us are very well-versed in back-end architecture. We are proud of the effort we put into creating such a difficult project, and we are happy that our app might present genuine utility to people who are concerned about their carbon footprint and health. We are exceedingly proud that our project did not fail in its final stages!

What we learned

We learned that during web design, it is never a good idea to develop responsive design starting from the desktop version. A small screen translates much better to a big screen than the other way around, where you have to squeeze around elements to make them fit on the page! We learned that it is important to ideate and come together with a cohesive idea of what the project should strive to be. We learned that Hackathons are exceedingly fun, and we are all looking forwards to more events in the future.

What's next for ClearSky Travelytics

One of our group members has expressed interest in maintaining the current version of our app, perhaps even improving upon it and marketing it in the future.

Built With

• css
• google-firebase
• google-maps
• javascript