DonationLocations

Inspiration

When Alex and I were in high school, we were given an activity in which we had to research a community resource center and describe how one could access the goods offered. In doing so, we found that this information was actually very hard to find. While brainstorming, we remembered this activity and realized we could create a site to solve this problem.

What it does

This site allows users and community leaders to add community resource centers to an aggregator, which provides information on where the place is located, what goods it offers, and when it is open. This site also allows users to filter by goods provided and by open dates, using a minimalist and intuitive UI.

How we built it

Alex and Adwaith worked together by proposing various potential problems, until we settled on this one when we remembered our old group activity. Then, we divided the work. Alex spent time researching various drives and collecting data. He also handled the CSS and HTML. Adwaith wrote the JavaScript programming for the page, and built the csv pipeline.

Challenges we ran into

We struggled to actually find the data for each site. Many of the sites were incredible intricate and thus information about when they're open or what exactly they offer were buried deep within their pages. This is why we settled on adding five entries to the initial release of our site.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first hackathon, so we are quite proud of having created a working site that very cleanly and intuitively solves a real-world problem within a time limit.

What we learned

We learned the importance of having a clean and intuitive site design that prioritizes readability and accessibility. Many sites try to use a very complex and fancy design, but this can obfuscate the data the user is actually looking for. We learned the importance of ensuring data is easily accessible.

What's next for DonationLocations

We want to create a sister site that also aggregates places that people can donate goods too. For the site itself, we want to add a location system that allows users to search which entries are closest to them.