Connecsian

Connecsian (connection + asian) serves as a resource for the Asian American community and those who are interested in the Asian American experience.

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Inspiration

As Asian Americans, we were inspired to create a website that could allow Asian Americans and those interested in the community to discover resources and connect to people in their area. The problem we hoped to solve was the lack of such a resource for the Asian American community. With this website, we would like to give a platform to Asian American women, in addition to museums and organizations, doing meaningful work and allow users to discover these people, places, and resources.

What it does

Our homepage first gives the user a quick overview of what they can find on the website. Our Connect page highlights activists, artists, and other figures, particularly Asian American women, as well as organizations, museums, businesses, and other establishments connected to the Asian American community. Users can either select a filter to receive specific results in their geographical area and area of interest or use the random generator button to receive arbitrary results. For example, if a user was in New York City and looking for activists to connect to, they could select “NYC Activism,” and our page would generate relevant results. Alternatively, they could also choose the random button, which would randomly provide one person, one place, and one resource from our compiled list. For each result, name, address (if applicable), short description of work or biography, and contact information (including links) is available. Lastly, you can read more about us on the Meet the Creators page.

How we built it

We first wireframed using Figma (which we also used to design the logo). Using Glitch, we used HTML/CSS/JS to develop the website. Then, we researched and compiled a list on Google Docs of activists, artists, educators, organizations, and resources to include on our website. Throughout, we used Slack and Instagram for communication purposes.

Challenges we ran into

We originally planned to allow users to use text input to select location and filters. However, we were running into problems with the syntax, so we decided to create several buttons instead (ex: NY Activism, SF Education, etc.). We were also hoping to allow users to select their location on Google Maps, but we realized we would not have time to compile resources in all of the possible selected locations. Moreover, we had never used APIs, so we decided to make the Google Maps functionality a future goal. We were able to focus on gathering information about people and organizations based in New York City and San Francisco, the two cities we are from. One other problem we hoped to resolve was the ability to generate a new random set of results every time the random generate button was pressed. We tried to solve this problem by playing around with ‘while’ loops, and we also asked for assistance in the ask-a-mentor channel. We decided to include a message on the website to refresh to clear results or receive new random results. In general, when we ran into challenges, our approach was to try different solutions, communicate with each other, and search for troubleshooting strategies.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we were able to work on a hackathon project together, since we each didn’t know everyone on the team before. Moreover, we are from New York City and San Francisco, so we are proud that we were able to communicate and schedule effectively despite the three hour time difference. We are proud of the filter and random generator functionalities, since we ran into the most challenges with these features but were able to work together to problem solve. In general, we are proud of the final website, which speaks to our experiences as Asian Americans and our hope that the Asian American community can become more connected.

What we learned

As we explored the various activists, artists, educators, organizations, and resources in San Francisco and New York, we gained more insight on the Asian American community around us. Even though our entire team is composed of Asian Americans, this project was a great opportunity to educate ourselves on Asian American history and resources. Additionally, our team started this project with basic skills in HTML/CSS/JS. As we worked together, we learned more about the different types of code that we could experiment with to see its end result on the website. Our team understood more about frontend and backend development. We became more comfortable with the different codes we used in the programming languages. As a team, we definitely learned a lot from each other. If any of us ran into any issues or were confused on something, we communicated well through Slack and Instagram to mention our thoughts. We worked well together and tried to resolve the many challenges we faced with coding initially. The workshops and activities held throughout the hackathon also taught us a lot about other fields of computer science, the applications of AI, and the high school/college experience.

What's next for Connecsian

On our Connect page, we have two Google Maps, one showing San Francisco and the other showing New York. Our team initially started out with these two locations because our team members are from them. However, it would be incredible if this website could expand and reach out to Asian Americans all around the globe. This would benefit all Asian Americans in advancing their knowledge on the Asian American community worldwide. We also hope to work on making the text input for location a feature of our website, as well as the ability to input location on Google Maps. We would also like to be able to generate a new set of random results every time the button is pressed, as opposed to asking the user to refresh. Finally, we would like to be able to append pictures with the text, so the user has a visual of what the person, place, or resource may look like. It would be cool to have the information already displayed only appear when the user hovers over the generated images.

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