What it Does
Connecting people of all ages with technology, through technology.
Inequitable access to electronic devices due to financial barriers has grown exponentially during the pandemic where the internet has become a necessity, especially for youth who rely on digital platforms for access to their education. Electronic waste and excessive amounts of consuming electronic devices persists as an awful problem around the world with millions of perfectly usable devices being thrown out or left unused each day. Fetch! (& Tricks!) aims to eliminate the lack of access to technology by providing a space where people who have gently used electronic devices can easily donate the devices to people who need them.
On the Fetch! (& Tricks!) website, interested participants would be able to fill out a questionnaire to determine what kind of electronic device that they would receive. Similarly, people interested in donating their devices could easily input the information of their devices and how far they would be willing to mail them to a recipient.
Fetch! (& Tricks!) also aims to improve tech literacy by building valuable relationships between youth and seniors through the supplementary app Tricks! If youth wanted to choose to volunteer their time in teaching seniors electronic literacy, they would be prompted to download the app. Tricks! is designed for profile matching between seniors and youth who are looking to exchange electronic literacy skills. Profile matching would be conducted from a questionnaire determining frequency of contact and complexity of electronic literacy skills aimed to learn and teach. This way, the youth will be able to be matched with seniors and be able to aid them in knowledge that they are comfortable with sharing. Basic curriculum ideas will be provided by the Fetch! website and Tricks! app developers to ease the teaching process on behalf of the youth. The app would have chatting capabilities intended to start off the teaching process. Further interaction such as video chat and screen sharing would be done through affiliated software such as Zoom or Skype until in-person interaction can be arranged.
Due to the current state of the pandemic, both youth and seniors who have been isolated can develop connections with each other while learning valuable skills and receive an electronic device.
What inspired us
Facing a mammoth challenge such as the COVID-19 pandemic, our team wanted to come up with an idea where we would be able to help solve problems that we saw in our own communities. We took inspiration from wanting to increase access to the internet for youth facing financial barriers and marginalized seniors seeking electronic literacy aid. Piecing two and two together, we saw that a connection could be made between youth and seniors in a newfound way through the sharing of skills and knowledge while creating meaningful connections with others in the community. Even though the service was designed for seniors and youth in mind, anyone of any age can easily and freely utilize the website and app.
What we learned
We learned more about UI and developing an effective plan for user interface design on Figma, a platform that also allows us to practice our HTML/CSS skills. Using our collaborative skills, we worked on Slack, Google Meets, and other platforms to share our ideas and develop our project. Through this, not only did we develop our coding and web design skills, we also developed our teamwork, collaboration, and communication skills. More importantly, we learned about the issues caused by the tech gap and how that can affect a person’s access to education, especially during COVID-19. Another important issue that we learned about was the impact of electronics on the environment. By providing another use for ‘old’ electronic devices, we developed a rudimentary solution for reducing the detrimental environmental impact technological devices can have on the planet.
How we built the project
Our first step when developing our project was determining challenges that different groups currently faced. Upon brainstorming, we discovered that during the pandemic, special focus had been brought to the tech gap and tech illiteracy. As it became more difficult to meet in person and provide an in-person educational experience, much of the world was shifted onto digital platforms leaving behind people who had trouble accessing these platforms due to a lack of technology or tech illiteracy. One of the solutions we were able to come up with was providing a space for people to donate their old electronic devices to people who needed them in addition to a space where people could improve their tech literacy skills by connecting with people who could teach them those skills. We decided to create both a website and app preview to show the flexibility of such a platform and how each version would have different functions. Figma was the most user-friendly software to develop our website and app previews using our limited coding skills. By first developing a UI design, we were able to more effectively design our site and app on Figma to be previewed.
Challenges we faced
One of the biggest challenges for this hackathon was the fact that the team had to work remotely. Issues such as not being in the same time zone, and not seeing each other’s screens in real-time as well as communicating in general was more difficult and perplexing, but it was a definite worthwhile experience.
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