Inspiration
Introduction
As a team we created the app CS Crowdsource. CS crowdsource is a new centralized hub that meets all of your crowdsourcing needs. From astronomy to just public opinion, we have developed a new way to share, comment, and view crowdsourcing projects from one easy to use location.
Inspiration
After participating in a citizen science project for astronomy, we saw that the responses were from a very narrow group of people. That made us think, what would happen if we could create a centralized place to share a crowdsourcing project to a broad variety of people? What kind of new and unique incites would this bring to the project? We believe that if we could create a very accessible area to get public opinions from, we would be able to achieve more from projects and also get more diverse responses from them. From then on we began to work towards making a dedicated crowdsourcing hub for people to share their ideas and comment on.
What it does
It allows for users to create an account, post their crowdsourcing projects, reply to comments and allow users to view separate user profiles and what those users have posted. Essentially what we have accomplished is making a forum dedicated to crowdsourcing only.
How we built it
To create the app we used multiple tools, programming languages, and designs. The heart of the app is centered around the basic App Inventor Framework that has a sole web viewer module placed to fill the screen with no boundaries as to clearly display the app at maximum resolution. To create the app itself, we created a Ruby on Rails framework system that allowed for ranks, user registration, posting, commenting, editing, and deleting. This system allowed us to create the framework necessary for our idea. Once the base was completed, the next step was styling. Using SCSS, HTML, and the Ruby on Rails system, we customized the look of the app and made it unique and friendly to all platforms and resolutions regardless of orientation or size. Following the SCSS and formatting there was a “clean up” period focused on cleaning all the code and making sure there was no bugs that could hinder the process for users.
Challenges we ran into
One of the main challenges we ran into was using SCSS as a main formatting tool and keeping our basic framework stable while making huge changes to how the app functioned. A consistent problem that occurred was the fact that every time we made some sort of major edit the framework would be compromised and a new bug would pop up. A majority of the time spent was fixing these bugs after major changes to the app.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We have a very solid login system that keeps a database of all users logged in and their login information. Using our 65 bit encrypted database our user’s login information is extremely secure. Along with that we have mostly employed the framework for a user ranking system that will allow certain users to have more privileges that others and will allow for fast editing in the future.
What we learned
We learned some of the hardships and values of being dedicated to the success of a website no matter how hard it may seem. As programmers we learned a lot about formatting using SCSS, along with ruby on rails to create a solid foundation for our website to run on. However through a lot of perseverance and teamwork we were able to make a working product that is easily added onto.
What's next for CS Crowdsource
As a team our mission is to expand the reach of CS crowdsource and attempt to build up a strong active user base. As we keep working, we will be adding new features in the post section to allow for polling and we are attempting to put in a tags system to separate the posts into topics for easier searching. In order to keep spam or fake responses down we have an in-development ranking system in place to allow for moderators who can help delete the spam responses and edit false information. CS Crowdsourcing has great potential and with all the new features rolling out soon we will be able to make this into a very polished product.
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