Inspiration
The prevalence of gambling has been embedded into our culture with the legalization of online betting platform. This has lead to a spike in gambling in the younger generation who have a multitude of ways to throw their money away at the tip of their fingers. The introduction of an addictive agent at such a young age can have severe affects, and GamGuard is the solution to this recent wave. GamGuard can help fight the "problem gambling" that has become been becoming the norm in our society.
What it does
GamGuard's mission is to support those affected by this addiction with the resources, support, and community they need to lead addiction free lives. This is done by creating a community of recovering addicts that can support each other, as well as providing external resources to help with addiction. A progress status is also shown on the landing page, reminding users of the benefits of quitting, helping them work through it day by day.
How we built it
We first designed the look of the website on Figma. After that, we began coding using React, HTML, and CSS. To get some of the more complex functionality, we utilized NextAPI and Firebase. We started with our sign up and login page. To store and authenticate, we leveraged Firebase Authentication into our application.
Challenges we ran into
When designing our carousel, we found that our idea that we drafted up before hand was not the end product reflected on the website. The addition of a carousel library made it easier, as we were no longer debugging minute details.
Another challenge was integration from each partners design to the actual web application. Both of us had different visions for what we wanted each page to look like. Through extensive communication, we were able to reach harmony in each of our individual designs which is reflected in the flow of the pages.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of the purpose of our website, and its goal. Gambling addiction is something that is typically overlook and joked about, but our approach is trying to combat that stigma around it.
What we learned
We learned about web design practices, using Figma to plan out our design before implementation. This allowed us to have a good idea of what each page was going to look like, so less time was spent on deciding how things would look, and more about how it should look.
The use of APIs and libraries was a great learning experience. Using Firebase for authentication was relatively simple, and a fitting tool to understand how APIs worked. This made the implementation of late APIs in the project easier to use.
What's next for GamGuard
Add more in home local resources to aid in the support of addicts seeking help. Resource page content improvement could immensely. Adding drop down menus that cater to the user's personal experience could assist in getting them more tailored help.
A robust moderation feature will need to be added to preserve the original intent and atmosphere of the space. On channels that strive to achieve similar goals to GamGuard, there are also a substantial amount of trolls that disrupt the space, with active moderation, their presence could be minimized.
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