Inspiration:
We realized that there was a big gap between the representation of the challenges faced by the disability community and their ability to voice opinions and come together to co-create meaningful solutions. Upon delving further into this topic, we were astounded to see the current situation and what had to be done in order to help solve this problem.
Two noticeable issues that we identified were that there was a lack of platforms for social impact-driven individuals to come together and contribute towards social good and that current community social platforms are vastly filled with topics that are not addressed the challenges faced by the disability community. Opinions aimed at these issues are overshadowed by non-social impact-focused topics and information. Furthermore, this matter was further exacerbated by the prominence of cyberbullying on many social platforms, which made the disability community even more apprehensive in terms of voicing their thoughts and trying to raise awareness about certain challenges that they faced.
What It Does:
EnablePulse is a web application designed to bring together like-minded individuals to co-create solutions to address the challenges faced by the disability community. It helps connect like-minded innovators from various backgrounds to collaborate and develop innovative solutions that can improve the lives of people with disabilities. The features that we have in our web application include forum pages, where individuals can start new topics or follow discussions that they have an interest in. These topics and discussions are focused on issues faced by the disability community. Another feature we have is our partner projects page, where projects we have found through partner organizations will appear on users' recommendation feeds. Users can then directly connect with these partners so as to contribute to projects which they deem more important and would like to help out on. Like-minded users can also connect with one another to discuss new issues or even form new relationships.
How we built it:
We built EnablePulse using ReactJS as the core library for the front end. We utilised the reactJS module react-router-dom for handling navigation between pages, allowing us to create a dynamic and responsive user experience. We also utilised the open-source module material-UI for some of the components and for styling the website, saving us time and effort on UI design. To handle user authentication and store data, we used Google Firebase, which is the Google-based tool we decided to use for this hackathon. With Firebase's authentication service, we were able to handle user sign-up and login and secure access to the user profile part of the website. Firebase's database allowed us to store and retrieve data, providing dynamic content to my users. Lastly, we utilised Figma to facilitate the creation of some of the pages of our UI.
In summary, by combining ReactJS, React Router DOM, Material-UI, Figma, and Firebase, we were able to build a dynamic, interactive, and stylish website with robust user authentication and data management capabilities.
Challenges faced:
User Authentication: Implementing secure and robust user authentication to ensure that users can create and manage their own accounts and that their information is protected.
Personalized Experience: Creating a personalized experience for each user, so that they can follow and engage with topics and discussions that are of interest to them.
Data Management: Storing and managing user data, including their account information, preferences and activity on the site, in a secure and scalable manner.
Accomplishments we are proud of:
We are very proud of all the work we have done during this period. We have put in a considerable amount of effort to ideate, create and implement all of the features of our project. Furthermore, we are extremely pleased to take with us this meaningful experience and share it with our peers, spreading the word of creating a good cause for those around us.
What we learned:
Throughout the process of creating this product from scratch, we learned that it was extremely challenging to implement all of our ideas at once. We had to go through many extensive discussions in order to come up with a product that we could all agree on and set our minds on. As such, all of us picked up a thing or two during our journey, from learning new technical skills when creating a product to being better teammates for future group projects.
What's next for EnablePulse:
For future iterations of EnablePulse, we plan to implement more advanced features such as a donation QR code generator for projects to easily access crowdfunding for their operations as well as a “Projects Near You” feature that can gather location data of users and suggest projects that are located within the vicinity for better convenience. Additionally, we also plan to integrate a live chat feature that can help users clear doubts and communicate directly with various project members.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.