Story
The story of how we landed on this project is a crazy one. As a team we came together with most of us being complete strangers to each other. We talked about potentially building an SMS app for the Glassdoor API, a national map of Walmart employee harassment locations, and even a gamified mockery of Walmart. After hours of debate and tables filled with empty soda cans, we finally decided to sleep on these decision of which idea we would go with. Finally we landed on Fruits of Labor, an idea that we believe takes the best attributes of the ideas we discussed and combines them into a concise, practical, and engaging experience for underrepresented employees of large corporations.
What it is and why
The mobile app that we've developed creates a gamified virtual community with a system of peer-to-peer support and wage accountability for employees. Employees can sign in with their name and join their coworkers in their own crowd sourced community. Employees can check in and out with the touch of a button in order to track their working hours at their workplace. By participating in the app and checking in to track their hours, employees are rewarded with ingame currency that allows them to customize their personal environment to share with their peers. Employees can also communicate with their coworkers through the app and provide support to their peers in need.
A common problem with many time tracking applications is that they do not provide incentive for employees to continue using the service. Our gamified network for employees provides intrinsic motivation for workers to participate in tracking their wages. The app creates a subtle foundation for organized communication; thus it is more difficult for employers to identify that this network is a unionizing effort.
How we built it
The app was built using the Unity engine, programmed using C#. Unity is a cross-platform game engine that is capable of using the Android SDK to create builds for Android phones. The visual assets were created using Paint.NET and Photoshop Free Online. Much of the major features were developed using Unity's uGUI framework for building game interfaces.
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges was landing on a final direction for the project. However, once we agreed on an idea our development flow became exponentially more efficient. We also had many technical issues to deal with including how we were going to allot spaces in the network to employees, and especially how we would do this asynchronously so that the application would not block. Coroutines help. So does Red Bull.
Accomplishments
Development of MVP of a peer to peer network for employees that could potentially solve the problem of communication between nameless employees at large corporations.
Collaboration between rag-tag revolutionaries.
What's next for Fruits of Labor
-Actual login profile system -Skin changes for the apple, and improved customization of personal environment. -Improved wage calculation
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