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Helping Hand Logo
Inspiration
Over the course of the pandemic, we noticed that not everybody had access to resources through retail stores where they are usually sold. We decided to use this realization as a starting point and expand it to include people that don’t have access to resources for other reasons as well.
What it does
We addressed this problem by building a social network that promotes resource sharing for those that cannot receive aid through already implemented systems, or those that are just looking for a way to help others while helping themselves. The website allows users to select from a list of items they would like to receive or have to give to others (creating a list of items could be implemented given more time). Using this list of items, stored in a google cloud database, the website will match people with others that would like to give items that you would like to receive and vice versa based on the nearest location (although the matching system is not complete yet).
How we built it
We started by looking for a service that could meet our needs of having unique data. The Firebase database, more specifically Firestore, meet all of our needs. The non-relational NoSQL database gave us the flexibility to create diverse data that could fulfill all of our needs. From there, we downloaded the Firestore SDK(software development kit) to access the full capabilities of the database from our environment. We decided to use JavaScript as it was most compatible with our front end was using HTML as their primary language. Using the Firestore SDK, the backend was able to use authentication without having to build out an entire authentication app and the convenient query methods of Firestore which allowed us to put data into our algorithm.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge that team faced was figuring out where to start. As a team of complete noobs to the web development scene, we had no idea where to start. If someone was watching our team from the beginning they would be surprised that we ended up finishing because of what a 180 degree turn the project took. Originally, we were planning to do complete hosting on Google Cloud and eventually build out a database ourselves. But as we tried to create our own Cloud Server and build our own database we realized how unaware we were. In the end, a lot of our own mistakes stemmed from our own lack of knowledge and starting in the wrong place.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
The accomplishment that we are most proud of is our perseverance throughout this entire project. All of us had no idea what these technologies were and only had a very elementary understanding of the concept. There were multiple instances where we considered giving up and just starting a new project. However in the end we were able to build a successful prototype that was able to accomplish all of the core functions that we wanted the web app to do.
What we learned
This hackathon was a great opportunity for the entire team to learn something new. The two frontend developers(Srikar and Rohin) were introduced into HTML and CSS. Both of them have never touched front-end development before and they were able to freely explore the two languages and figure out what looked the best and what best fit in conjunction with the back end. The two backend developers(Matthew and Sloan) had no idea where to start. Matthew had started with trying to take the Google Cloud Digital Leader course and was hoping that he was able to learn enough by the end of the course to build out a full server that hosted a database and host the web app. Sloan tried to just find a way to build his own database from scratch. Both of them realized that this was way out of their skill level. They both ended up settling on Firestore Database from Firebase. It was a good database as it was a non-relational NoSQL that was able to be flexible enough to handle all of the team’s data needs. They learned about how data was stored, how data was accessed, and how to use SDK in conjunction with their own files.
What's next for Helpful Hand
In the future, we hope to include the ideas we had originally planned to incorporate into the website at the start of the hackathon but did not have time to complete. Some of these was a machine learning model that would be able to suggest who to request based on past interactions. Furthermore, we wanted to implement a chat room for the entire local area but were unable to do so, and is definitely a future addition to the web. As well as being on the web, we wanted to have our own mobile app.
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