ILPCHEM

Coordinate App Logo

Inspiration

All of us were from the same Integrated Learning Programme for Chemistry. And we all felt that enrolling into SUTD with the compulsory hostel rules has affected our parents' mood and mental health. We felt that they really miss our presence at home and is always looking forward to us going back home to visit. And this relates to not just university but any instance where parents may miss the presence of their child such as National Service or Overseas Education. And so we decided to build an app that helps families stay connected.

What it does

Our app called Coordinate is an interactive map that allows families to create an exclusive group for themselves and add events to a map. Some of the features include:

A simple, easy-to-use interactive map interface where parents and children alike can provide daily updates of their whereabouts through tapping and holding the location
Family groups for private viewing
Scheduling event updates in the future for ease of convenience and updating past events
A reply thread feature to the daily updates
Uploading multi-media of that specific location on the map (drawings, texts, GIFS)
Stored history of aforementioned multimedia (there will be a gallery at each location)

How we built it

prompt engineering in Perplexity Pro labs-AI
software prototyping (Thunkable)-no AI

Challenges we ran into

The prototypes that we came up with had the features we wanted to show, however, the design aspect to make the app appealing for users is not entirely there.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that in the short time span of 1 and a half days, we are able to come up with two prototypes that is able to work similar to what we envision our actual app to be with a decent UI and UX.

What we learned

we can get decent results from vibe coding a protoype however for the actual creation of an app, actual software expertise is needed. Hence, AI cannot replace certain hard skills.
Given that a hackathon is a time-based event, there is a need to compromise our own work ethics at times and priortitise the deliverables

What's next for ILPCHEM

We look forward to seeing what new features we can test and add to this app. As we continue on with life experiences, we would like to see what new innovative ideas we can explore and come up with. Some desired features: