Hotlas

Inspiration

We realized that we have been spending more time in our dorms, as we struggled to find the balance between a healthy social life and being safe during the spread of the Coronavirus. Having two international students on our team, we noticed that we encountered similar issues our first year at Emory. In our struggle to fit in, a central hub for campus events would've helped us to make new connections and explore the social environments.

What it does

Our product has two features. We have a map that shows the campus, including important building and stores, as well as the locations of current or upcoming events. By clicking on buildings, one can receive some information on events hosted there. The map also uses red circles to mark population hotspots. The other feature is a list of events. The user can click on an event and receive a description, a location on the map, and can save it to their calendar app. Universities would buy subscriptions for its entire student, faculty, and staff-body and could use this app as a campus analytics tool. They would use the data to improve campus safety, advise on-campus stores, organize new events, and most importantly: maintain corona-specific policies.

How we built it

We use adobe XD and xcode to create the design and basic functionalities of the prototype.

Challenges we ran into

We were struggling with designing a sophisticated prototype as it usually requires days to complete and improve. In terms of financials, the most difficult aspect was plan to develop the app from Emory to major universities in the US while using realistic revenue and cost predictions.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we produced a complete app prototype and that our finance plan would be sophisticated enough to realistically fund the project.

What we learned

We learned how to work with maximum efficiency and under the stress of numerous guidelines. During the mentor sessions, we learned how to develop focus on a product (i.e. not making the mission too broad). We believe that the process of creating a business allowed us to teach ourselves how to develope marketing, financial, and technological strategies.

What's next for Hotlas

As this is aiming to develop after Corona, we believe that the expansion to universities around the world is realistic. We would remodel the mission of the app to serve primarily as a social gathering tool, which includes informal events organized by the users themselves.

Built With

• adobe-xd
• xcode