Coaware

Our application, Coaware (COVID19 + Aware), has functionalities designed for emergency situations regarding child abuse prevention, a rising social issue due to increased isolation from COVID-19.

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Inspiration

In November 2018, we competed in the Congressional App Challenge in U.S. Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson’s congressional district. Since we had numerous relatives who have Alzheimer’s Disease or other forms of dementia, we were inspired to combine our passions in community service and technology to design an app for Alzheimer’s patients. Following two years of refinement and development, we won our district’s Congressional App Challenge. The U.S. House of Representatives invited us to go to Washington, DC, to present this app to the U.S. House of Representatives (link.)

The rising impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on a community, regional, national, and international level inspired us to use our mobile app development experiences to find a solution that addresses major areas of the problem. As children, we realized that isolation and social distancing could lead to stressful situations for numerous individuals, particularly children. As a result of this, we learned that children who live in an abusive situation are at more substantial risk. This risk is especially significant due to the isolation that COVID-19 mandates. We realized that community members need to have a greater awareness of the signs and symptoms of child abuse and neglect during this stressful time and the numerous resources available to the children who fall victim to subsequent maltreatment. This risk, experts have shown, could result from isolation, lack of answers, lack of structure to the day, and the lack of things to look forward to - all effects of COVID-19.

As students, we believe we can impact society, big or small, with our idea. Technology is indeed the future, and we need to make sure that we adopt the tools that we use to help, entertain, to assist child abuse victims in being very reflective of these advances. Furthermore, we hope to use our application to inspire and encourage other involved students in our district and even around the state to get involved in coding and also develop their apps for problems that are personal to them. If we were to win the competition, we plan to continue to use our platform to help further encourage and inspire others and show other legislators the importance of the problem we are trying to address.

What it does

Our application, Coaware (COVID + Aware), contains a questionnaire/checklist consisting of eight questions designed in collaboration with child abuse prevention experts such as the Baltimore Children's Advocacy Center.

The checklist contains a different method for users to organize their thoughts but contains the same question format. Next, the app provides an option to provide the user with child abuse prevention hotlines or children's advocacy centers. If the user toggles this option, the app will provide these resources based on their location.

However, according to many experts, Coaware's most important feature is its generation of email logs. These logs provide users with a method to organize their thoughts, allowing them to access a particular child's responses from weeks or even months. When the user reports child abuse, they can detail previous dates alongside specific symptoms of child abuse the child was exhibiting at the time.

How we built it

We built our application using Java and XML in Android Studio. We used a relative layout format with tab-based fragments for the first tab and a corresponding layout design with intent fillers for the second tab’s functionality. For the user interface, we utilized AAA contrast for the vast majority of the app to enhance usability and readability for all users.

Challenges we ran into

Our first significant difficulty was to make the application and user-interface simple enough to be operated by any individual. We had to navigate and test out various fonts, image sizes, color combinations, and table setups to make sure that the app was clean and simple to operate without compromising the usefulness of its features.

The second technical challenge we faced in creating the application was making sure that it would be functional across various Android Platforms. The problems that we ran into would vary from device to device, so it was challenging to come up with a solution that worked for every single one and didn’t create problems of its own. We ran several tests on a variety of Android emulators and tested the application on a wide array of personal devices and were eventually able to come up with a solution that worked across the boards. This process was eye-opening for us, as we never realized how seemingly small changes could have drastic impacts on different devices.

The final challenge we are currently dealing with is getting Coaware into the hands of the people who need it the most. We are currently in discussions with schools and children's advocacy centers to accomplish this task.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

Some accomplishments that we’re proud of deal with our app for Alzheimer’s patients, AlzBuddy, which inspired us to make this app. The U.S. House of Representatives invited us to showcase AlzBuddy to them in the U.S. Capitol Building. Individually, numerous State and National Congresspeople have invited us to demonstrate our application. Fox 4 News also interviewed us (link). AlzBuddy was also named the 1st Runner-Up in the national Diamond Challenge at the Sam Houston State University Pitch Location. We are also proud to have many downloads after approval of our application onto the Google Play Store. We want to use our experience and success to continue to propel Coaware to help children globally. Additionally, our group was named Conrad Innovators by the Conrad Foundation for both AlzBuddy and Coaware.

What’s next for Coaware App

Overall we are delighted with our final product, and we were able to make a lot of improvements from the last app we created to this one. That said, we would always love to be able to improve the app even more, and we know that there are improvements to be made, we just didn’t have the time to make all of them. We know that we can always improve, incorporate more valuable feedback, and learn from our mistakes. One challenge that we would have to face if we decided to develop the app, however, would be maintaining a clean, simple interface despite having more functions. In this specific field, we have to understand that less is sometimes more. Potential technological additions will include modules and relaxing games for child abuse victims, networks for victims to share their stories in a peer-network, as well as possible chatting services within the app in partnership with abuse hotlines.

We are currently in the process of publishing our application in the Google Play Store as well as developing an iOS version of our app. In addition to this, we are working on collaborating with various non-profit organizations that specialize in child abuse awareness at a community and regional level. We have objectively networked with various legislators to start district initiatives and launches of our application. Success in this global hackathon will help us launch Coaware worldwide to protect the thousands of children that fall victim to child abuse.

We are also looking to expand our app to other areas, such as domestic violence, whose rates, unfortunately, skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic.

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