The Bosses
We were approached by representatives from Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, who mentioned that it was a shame how often their kids and kids visiting the Garden had their faces buried in monitors.
The Team
We are a well-balanced team, consisting of two full-stack junior developers, a more senior magician, and a very talented designer, all from Miami area.
The Problem
Kids don't enjoy being outside, because they're locked in their technology.
The Solution
Give the kids some technology they can have fun with, while they enjoy the outdoors and the beauty of the Garden.
Enter...Green Thumb
*Green Thumb is a mobile-enabled web app that uses fun games that kids can use to interact with the nature around them...through their mobile phones! The app includes multiple activities for the kids to try, some that use their mobile device's cameras and some that only use the phone to record their outdoor activities.
No matter which activity they do outside, whether taking a picture of a flower to learn more about it or counting how many times they rolled down the hill, they are rewarded by points and badges that they can cherish or show off to their friends.
The How
We used the Ruby on Rails stack to build our project, and had assistance from many gems, including paperclip, AWS and the JustVision API, among other things.
Challenges we ran into
We mostly ran short of time. We all stayed up the full 24 hours to work our way through our ambitious ideas of games.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are most proud of the ability of the app to take pictures of flowers and return information about what type of flower it is, with the Flower Power game.
What we learned
You can never have too many front-end specialists. Time is precious. Focus is important. Teamwork is key.
What's next for Green Thumb
We'd like to continue to add more challenges/games to the app and develop upon some already exciting ideas.
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