Project Story

Inspiration

Coming from a semi-urban city, I have seen people struggle with the basic use of technology due to lack of awareness, education, and personal doubt. Even when essential services exist, accessing them digitally can feel intimidating or confusing.

This project is my small attempt to make essential services accessible to the underserved community by keeping the interface as simple and intuitive as possible.

About the Project

Community Compass is a location-based web application that helps users find nearby food banks, shelters, and hospitals. Users can search for any city or use their current location to discover essential services mapped in real time.

The core idea was to reduce friction — fewer clicks, fewer decisions, and clear results.

How I Built the Project

I built the project using Vite, which integrates React with minimal configuration overhead and allowed me to focus on development rather than setup.

For the backend, I used Node.js, and integrated APIs for maps, geocoding, and real-world place discovery to power location-based search and resource retrieval.

What I Learned

Designing for simplicity is often harder than adding features. Choosing the right tech stack early saves significant time and reduces complexity. Working with real-world data introduces edge cases that require careful handling. Accessibility and usability are just as important as technical correctness.

In simple terms, the impact of a product can be represented as:

$$Impact = Accessibility \times Simplicity$$

Challenges Faced

The main challenges I faced were:

• Limited development time
• Deciding which features were essential and which to discard
• Selecting a tech stack that minimized configuration overhead
• Managing data flow between the frontend, backend, and external APIs

Despite these challenges, the project evolved into a focused solution aimed at real-world impact rather than feature overload.

Built With

• browser-geolocation-api
• css
• express.js
• html
• javascript
• leaflet.js
• node.js
• nominatim-api
• openstreetmap
• overpass-api
• react-(via-vite)
• rest-apis