Inspiration
In the last three months our lives on this planet have changed rapidly, brutally and unexpectedly because of Coronavirus. Italy has been one of the first countries to be affected by the pandemic and we’ve now been under lockdown for more than three weeks. We don’t know when all of this will end and the only thing we’re relying on is information. However, information found online is not always true, but most people are not able to verify it immediately and they end up believing in that and start acting accordingly.
What it does
Our app provides updated, official and verified information about the pandemic’s current state and the Government’s official regulations. It's meant for everyone, also non expert users. More into details: -The “Data” section provides data about the current situation in Italy of people affected by the virus, recovered and deaths. This information is also available for every region and for every province. -The “News” sections provides two types of News: Official ordinances from Government and news from the Ministry of Health and the Government. Each article quotes its source so that users can easily verify where it comes from. -The “Prevention” section provides behavioural advice on how to prevent the virus, based on what’s stated on the Italian Ministry of Health website. -The “Symptoms” section provides information about what are the symptoms of the virus and what to do, based on what’s stated on the Italian Ministry of Health website. -The “Form” sections provides the form everyone has to fill in order to go out based on a real need. In fact, in that section is quoted the official notice that reports who can go out. -Emergency Numbers.
It is country based so that it can provide accurate and updated information that are for sure applicable to the country in which the user is living.
How I built it
We built an iOS app whose functionalities are all working. We wrote the app using Swift programming language and Xcode IDE. We use MapKit to access users’ geolocation and instantly show them data for the region they are in. We used the official GitHub repository to get the data about positive, recovered and dead people, using http requests and JSON about the national, regional and provincial situation. Lastly we used regular expressions to get the data about news, news content and the certification module where the API were not available.
Challenges I ran into
One on the main challenges was not being all together in the same place but we rapidly and easily overcame this with very long zoom sessions and the agile work methodology.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
We’re proud about how we’ve overcome our distance and how we’ve worked together and learnt more technical topics. But above all, we’re proud to prive the user with accurate and verified information that is all in one place.
What I learned
We learnt more about geolocation and getting information from json files. We also learnt more the User Experience.
What's next for CoronaVirus Italy
Our app model is country-focused so that it can provide accurate information. But it's built in a way that it can be applied to all countries, which is our next goal: building this for other countries.
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