Our Inspiration ✨
Our main inspiration was gleaned from looking through the Staff/Administration section of our school’s yearbook and realizing that the majority of our staff (especially the upper-level administration) did not consist of individuals from marginalized groups. We noticed that this problem was present in institutions throughout the country, so we wanted to find a way to address it. Additionally, a few of our team members previously attended a webinar about corporate-level diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) about a year ago. Although the webinar was extremely informative, we still found ourselves a bit confused on how a company would actually implement DEI. Therefore, we decided to use our programming knowledge to streamline the process of creating a more inclusive workplace through data analysis.
What Flourish Does ⭐
Flourish brings light to the socioeconomic issue of workplace discrimination and provides a new perspective on how to rectify it by increasing DEI. Not only does more DEI improve employee satisfaction, it also raises the overall productivity of an organization because it opens up communication between different groups, leading to heightened creativity and innovation. By taking a personalized approach to assessing DEI and finding hidden bias, we provide concrete, actionable solutions to companies to guarantee a positive workplace.
How We Built Flourish 💻
On the front end, we used HTML, JavaScript, and CSS to build a simplistic and user-friendly website. On the back end, we created a python algorithm that analyzes and visualizes employee data in the form of DEI reports and interactive graphs. To make our code as efficient as possible, we used the Pandas library for data analysis and used NumPy, Plotly, and Seaborn libraries for our graphs. In order to seamlessly incorporate our python algorithm into our website, we used a Flask web server.
Challenges We Ran Into ❌
Communicating between the HTML webpage and the python algorithm proved difficult, and it took us a while to fully understand the mechanics of Flask, as we had no prior experience with it. Additionally, an unexpected challenge was that we were working in three different time zones (Pacific Standard Time, Eastern Standard Time, and Central European Summer Time), so scheduling times to work concurrently was definitely not easy.
Accomplishments that We're Proud Of 🏆
The entire experience was incredibly rewarding, as it was the first major hackathon we ever did. As beginner developers, we are quite proud of our entire website, especially since we weren’t all familiar with HTML. However, we are most proud of the fact that we managed to produce a custom-generated summary with DEI scores (as shown in the video) for the user within the website, since that was a pivotal factor in helping organizations increase DEI.
What We Learned 📖
From making the website, we became much more familiar with HTML in general and also learned how to create a Flask server. From the data analysis part, we learned about the different features of the Pandas library and developed a deeper understanding of how to use the NumPy, Plotly, and Seaborn libraries. Overall, one of the most important things we learned was how to convert python output into HTML script, as that was the most challenging aspect of our project.
What's Next for Flourish? 📈
Here at Flourish, one of the things we pride ourselves on is our long-term business model and scalability. First, we plan to implement a company login system which will allow for even more personalized service. This will also allow us to launch our premium features to generate revenue. Furthermore, once the login system is running, we will create a company leaderboard and verification system to motivate organizations to improve their DEI even further. Once a company reaches a certain level of DEI, they will receive a “Flourish Verification,” which will help bolster their legitimacy. In the future, we also plan to expand to different markets because we know that DEI is necessary in all environments. Thus, we will create algorithms that measure customer demographics to ensure that companies are being inclusive towards their customer base (for example, a makeup company should be inclusive of all skin tones); launch education services that teach employees about the value of DEI; and write workshops for schools to become more equitable.
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