InstAlert

Inspiration

Following the Australian wildfire crisis, we were inspired to design an app that allowed individuals to send and receive updates on inclement weather conditions. Our vision is to provide accurate, real-time data, in order to make informed decisions on how to prioritize safety and prepare for the worst.

What it does

Once an emergency alert for inclement weather is received, you are redirected to the InstAlert app, which allows the user to explore the different functionalities. Depending on the specific weather condition, the home page displays tabs to learn more about the nature of the event, live updates where you can view and contribute to the feed, a chat line to communicate any questions or concerns, the next steps to take to be safe, a map to view the location and severity of the weather, and an option to share warnings to social media.

How we built it

Beginning with a schematic and prototype designed on Figma, we implemented the chatbot functionality through the use of React-native, JavaScript, and Swift to demonstrate what a conversation with the support service would look like.

Challenges we ran into

With a team of only three members and limited experience with React-native, Swift and Figma, we ran into a few challenges when brainstorming problems to tackle and how to execute our ideas effectively. Ultimately, after many long hours of attempting to understand the proceedings, we were able to successfully develop a functional prototype, as well as a chatbot that can be communicated with.

Timing was one of our greatest issues we faced when working on this project, but with proper work delegation based on strengths, we were able to follow through with our visions and create an app that we are beyond excited to see come to fruition.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team we were very proud of the fact that we were able to develop an app from scratch in the amount of time that we had.

What we learned

This project encompassed a variety of languages, frameworks, and UI design, which we were all very inexperienced with using in the past. Overall, the development of this app not only taught us the workings of front and back end design, but how to also consider the feasibility of the idea itself, which is something we find most people forget to consider in the process. As was reiterated over the course of the weekend, ideas rely heavily on the pitch itself, which is why we dedicated quite a bit of time to the development of an effective way to present our project.

What's next for InstAlert

We hope to follow through with some of the other functionalities of the app itself in order for it to live up to the standards we set. Following a complete transfer of the design from Figma to Swift, we plan on integrating the social media aspect of the app in order to reach a broader audience and contribute to our marketing tactic of spreading awareness on other news disseminating services. This would also include implementing some of the business strategies to maximize the outreach that we have so that our main goal of keeping citizens safe can be achieved.