Grapevine.AI

Inspiration

Urvee - Some of my ideas for grapevine.ai stemmed from the marked difference in ecological profiles and the presence of different birds in green spaces between Sydney's suburbs, especially when compared to average socio-economic status. I realised that urban green spaces are heavily reliant on the tools/expertise that councils are able to afford and access. Nikhil - I was actually already kind of interested in AI, and when Urvee suggested using mapping tools to help with planning green spaces, I thought it would be a great idea to also use AI to provide more information and insight to users, as its kind of hard to easily access this kind of detailed information.

What it does

Grapevine AI is a combination of a mapping tool (think like Google Maps), where users can search up locations and get insights about how they can contribute to and get involved in urban green spaces in that area.

How we built it

We used a combination of ArcGIS, HTML for the website, and also OpenAI to generate the information.

Challenges we ran into

Urvee - I struggled with ArcGIS Online initially - the user interface was somewhat confusing for a beginner, and my computer struggled to process the large, complex datasets into highly detailed maps. However, with trial and error and a great deal of patience, a decently functional map was produced. Nikhil - I struggled a lot with developing the AI aspect of the project, as it was difficult to securely integrate OpenAI through node.js with HTML. Eventually, I had to just decide to not actually integrate the AI component, because it took way too much time and resources to try setting up a separate server to securely pass the API key.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Urvee - I understand the basics of ArcGIS Online a lot better now, and publishing the final product was very satisfying. Nikhil - Even though I didn't manage to integrate the AI for full functionality, I was able to realise when it was too difficult for me to do, and instead finished as much of what else I could do in the project. It also felt really nice to create the website using HTML.

What we learned

Urvee - Although I'm proficient in graphic design, I also learned about UI design and how to translate my skills from the former to the latter. I gained practical insight into formal notions of intentionality in UI design, such as usability heuristics, which can help enhance future graphic design projects I take on. Nikhil - I learnt quite a lot about using OpenAI's API, and also with javascript, as this was actually the first time I used javascript to program something (I normally use python).