Inspiration
We were inspired by the simple fact that so many students own cars, yet there is no system in place for those students to find any stragglers or stranded students who need quick rides within campus. Given the huge student overpopulation in UCSC, we wanted to empower student drivers to help other students in need as well as provide the other students an alternative to the unreliable (and often times full) public transportation we have currently.
What it does
The main feature of this app is to connect student drivers with extra passenger space with other fellow students in need of a short and quick ride to anywhere around campus. By providing means for drivers to find students in need, and students without effective means of self transportation to provide incentive for drivers to provide such rides, not only do we tackle the issue of untimely and overcrowded public transportation, but also reduce environmental pollution by maximizing passenger space per vehicle. Ultimately, Hitch empowers students to 'hitch' a ride with others and can even aid in forming stronger social connections between one another.
How we built it
The application was built for Android devices using Android Studio. It utilizes a server and database to store user login information as well as mediate user ride and driver requests and service acceptances respectively.
Challenges I ran into
- Setting up a server and database
- Find effective means to implement Location services to more accurately pinpoint users
Accomplishments that we're proud of
- Learning to utilize Android Studio and build our first app
What I learned
- The difficulty in learning to utilize an unfamiliar development tool
What's next for Hitch
In the future we plan to:
- expand to incorporate map coordinates and functionality
- add pricing to expand marketability and add driver incentive
Built With
- android-studio
- database
- java
- sql
- xml
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