FemSpace

Putting Women's Needs on The Map

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🗺️ Inspiration

In today's world, many women face challenges in accessing affordable menstrual products and suitable restroom facilities. Recent studies have shown that the average woman spends approximately $20 per cycle on menstrual products, as reported by the National Organization for Women in 2021. This adds up to more than $200 per year and thousands of dollars over the course of her lifetime.

Menstruation causes more than a financial cost, but also a significant physical and emotional burden.

FemSpace is about empowering women with reliable information. By doing so, we hope to alleviate the challenges women face during menstruation and contribute to a world where menstruation is no longer a burden.

📍 What it does

FemSpace is an interactive app designed to provide women with a reliable resource for locating free menstrual products and accessible restrooms in their vicinity. The app offers insights into various washroom amenities, including menstrual product availability, gender-neutral bathrooms, changing tables, feeding rooms, and family washrooms. It also provides feedback to the developers on menstrual product availability by location, to allow for predictions of product demand.

⛏️ How we built it

  • Figma: Used to create the mock-up & demo
  • Python (Folium & Pandas Library): Create the heatmap for product demand analysis
  • React Native, Expo-Cli: Interactive app interface
  • OpenStreetMap API: Map and geolocation integration

🧠 Challenges we ran into

Developing FemSpace presented challenges, including a steep learning curve for creating a heatmap using the Python Folium library, a tool new to our team. Integrating the location tagging API was also difficult and required significant trial and error.

Overcoming these challenges strengthened our commitment to our mission of menstrual equity and female empowerment.

👏 Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our team takes pride in our interactive product achievement despite the limited time and beginner-level knowledge of the tech stack chosen.

Also, we are proud of our implementation of data analysis for the developer's side, showcasing how we will make our product more scalable and impactful.

📝 What we learned

We learned about working with APIs for location tracking and navigation between locations. Additionally, we delved into data analytics in various Python libraries and explored practical design visualization using Figma.

💭 What's next for Fem Space

We're looking to expand the app by including additional locations and collecting real-time data on product availability, specifically by gathering user input on the number of products in stock. This approach will improve scalability and allow us to allocate resources more effectively, prioritizing areas and products based on popularity.

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