ComEx

In our increasingly interconnected world, UTD students must find a way to seamlessly & cleverly handle their international finances by investing & holding currencies that are valid wherever they go.

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Inspiration

It's no secret that our world and, to a more personal extent, university are becoming more and more interconnected with the advancement of communication and travel technology. Bright minds from around the Earth can attend stellar universities like the University Of Texas at Dallas that are thousands of miles away, just like hundreds of our international students choose to do every single year. Furthermore, if a student would just like to temporarily test out a new country to live in, many Comets, and students from around the country, choose to study abroad at some point in their college career. These students need services that allow them to not need to worry about their finances so they can focus on their studies and, of course, having fun exploring the world!

What it does

Our website/application provides up-to-date information on the home dashboard for the current values of foreign currencies, as well as cryptocurrencies, and breaking news on similar topics. The user's total portfolio balance is also displayed on the dashboard.

How we built it

Our team built this project with a combination HTML and Javascript in a Visual Studio Code environment. We used several extensions to support cooperation, such as Microsoft Live Share, so that we could all have access to and edit the same files in real time. We also utilized the HTML Live Preview extension so we could view our changes in real time, as well. Our website is hosted by a shared GitHub repository.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into many challenges throughout the course of this hackathon. The primary challenge we all faced was having limited, if any, exposure to HTML and JavaScript, especially for website-building. Another challenge we faced was working through the online workstyle that must be done due to Covid-19.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're highly proud of our ability to think of these ideas that could really help students, and that we were able to implement a visible website for people to see.

What we learned

Due to the nature of working in a brand new environment, all of our team members learned many new skills. For example, we had three members who were first time coders in HTML, with the fourth only having limited experience. We also learned several aforementioned methods for collaborative coding, that promoted seamless cooperation amongst our teammates and prevented one or two members from having to bear the bulk of the work. A few other examples are how to use and implement the Chart.js library, utilize JavaScript to create dynamic components and include them in a website, and what the conversion rate to many different currencies is!

What's next for ComEx

We're not done yet, we have many plans for ComEx in the future to continue helping our students that are excited about exploring the world. We were unable to implement many of our best ideas that would truly make a difference for users. We allow for students to invest their money in these currencies, and provide data to support or warn about their investment choices. Another operation we would like to provide to improve user experience is to have simulated investing, where students can use simulated currency exchange to practice and see how their investment choices would reflect in real life. One feature we would like to give users is to favorite certain currencies by adding them to their watchlist. This would allow them to more closely track currencies they're interested in, or already have a stake in and can then make better decisions concerning how that currency is doing. One final feature we plan to implement is to show available ATM's nearby the user's current location. This would especially help students traveling abroad to find a quick way to perform any necessary transactions.

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