Debate Duel

DebateDuel is a fantasy football-like app where users make their picks on who will perform the best in political debates. DebateDuel encourages participation by gamifying a great way to get† informed.

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** The project will not compile on the public github as the raw code has private keys, you can run the code on the provided apk**

Inspiration

The inspiration for this project comes from "The Bachelor" where many fantasy leagues award points to participants who do and say certain things. Seeing as political debates are also quite formulaic, a similar fantasy league could be developed to award points to politicians sharing their positions. Gamification is a proven strategy to increase engagement, so providing a fun incentive for younger audiences to watch political debates is a great way to boost civil participation.

What it does

Debate Duel provides users with a means of choosing politicians who they think will perform strongly in upcoming political debates. Politicians are awarded or deducted points for various quotes, and actions. A user's points are summed and compared to other users that are in the same league.

How we built it

We used the android studio to develop a client-side app that handles user signups, league creation, politician selections, and results. For the backend, we have a SQL database on a server that hosts the results of debates, users, and leagues. User passwords were stored using md5 hashing. We had an initial design phase where the UI pages were formatted and the backend logic was developed. Once a rough draft of these components was finished, a prototype of the app was produced with hard-coded information. Next, a SQL database was created to eliminate hard-coded information and allow for interaction between users. Finally, we began the creation of an admin website that would allow for the easy updating and maintaining of debate scores, we were able to finish the front end of the website and part of the backend, but it still needs a little work to be fully operational.

Challenges we ran into

A high level of security administration was introduced to the app to provide user authentication. This led to multiple access issues that complicated development for the sake of security. Multiple members were rather new to Android studio and SQL databases which contributed to some early struggles in setup.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The user interface is impressive and allows users to easily make picks, compete in leagues and see results. The backend logic works fluently with the UI, while also using a security system to protect user information. The application achieves our initial goal to promote engagement in civil discussion, especially in the younger demographic where political engagement is low.

What we learned

For many of our members, this is the first time they have worked on a full-stack application from start to finish. We have gained experience in the initial application and software design, UI interfaces, and the integration of SQL databases.

What's next for Debate Duel

The biggest element that we would finish up is the admin side website that allows for the easy updating of the debate data, currently, we have the UI done and part of the backend. As for the next big step for debate duel, we want to create an online method for users to add photos to their usernames and leagues as they currently have to go through the app to do so, one method considered was to use S3 buckets which currently store default images. A secondary feature would be the ability to save a user account with an authenticator token so that a user does not need to log into the app every time they open it.

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