Inspiration
We are motivated to begin with this project because we sympathize with the daily struggles that women and non-binary people go through. The project, Guardian, is inspired by "FindMy", an Apple app, because of its useful functionality of tracking other users while incorporating the app "Maps" (GPS). We believe that by using similar features and adding on with our own creativity and experience to enhance the overall programs, this can be a game changer to reinforce safety for everyone.
How we built it
At the beginning, we started with JavaScript for front-end and back-end of the website in which we aimed to create a simple layout and user-friendly as it prompted for women empowerment. The website included navigator, also known as geolocator, and Google Maps' API to assist tracking other users nearby within the group. We believe that by knowing locations of everyone at the time and when it changes, women would feel safer due to the fact that there will always be people who you trust knowing where you are at almost every time. It creates a sense of safety and less worries for women when hanging out with others. MongoDB was also a big part of our project as it helped storing longitude and latitude data; this functionality can locate the other user phones, which was inspired from Life360.
Challenges we ran into
One challenge we ran into was the decision to go either mobile or web development. Each had its own set of benefits and drawbacks, but ultimately we decided to go with the web route, as we had the most amount of experience collectively with it. Since it was our first time doing Hackathon, we also experienced trouble working collaboratively on a database too.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Ultimately we are proud that we learned something new as this project was very challenging.
What we learned
We learned a lot about what goes into making an idea reality, at practically every step of the way our group had to continuously communicate and critically think so we could get to the next problem.
What's next for Guardian
The original layout of this project was we wanted to create an app where users can form a room and add others. Within the room, there's a special feature called distance, if a certain user goes pass a certain amount of miles or they leave the set radius on the map then the app will notify everyone in that group "person xxx has gone too far please check up on them". Another feature we thought about was a mini-alarm where it alerts people to check-up with others within group every certain amount of time. Although this function might be a bit annoying due to the alert, however, this might be the one of the safest feature for our users yet. How do we approach the problem when someone unable to access to the phone and is in trouble or being harassed? With the use of mini-alarm, we can ensure the safety of everyone, especially women, who are at places that can be dangerous to them, such as parties, allies, workplaces, concerts, and etc. because there will always be someone checking up their abouts. Last but not least, we thought about incorporating heart-beat data to detect if they are in trouble. Due to the time and limited resources, we were unable to fully shown the potential of our app. We had to take the route of using a website with limited features as well. Overall, every future features we will be adding to our app/website is to use to help for women, nonbinary and everyone's safety.
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