We wanted to allow people from around the world to see data easily and quickly, whether it is their own data or data they have gotten from repositories, either online or elsewhere. People can make inferences and observe trends all on their own, and since this program is very versatile and the format is very easy to fit into, anyone can pick it up and utilize it. This is a data visualization software that takes in excel files with some variable tracked over time and by country, and you can view trends across time and regions.
In order to make this program, we made huge array of polygons to represent the various countries in the world, and parsed the data to map the values to colors to display on the map, and analyze the data to make it more user-friendly. We also implemented a file browser to make it easier for a user to download or create any data file to use with our program, and some examples so they can see what a sample data source should look like.
We ran into various challenges in the course of this project. First and foremost, since we barely knew anything except java, we had to figure out how to make an entire world map in java that is still manipulable so we could change the colors of the countries individually and also connect islands with the central landmasses. Another challenge was implementing the file browser, since it did not mesh easily with the code we had written previously. Since we are all freshmen, we are all very proud of what we have accomplished and all that we have learned through this experience. We are proud that we made an application that be used in the real world, and applied the knowledge we learned in the classroom into something that wasn't for a grade. We learned how to work as a team on something that may seem solitary like coding, and utilize various libraries and apis in order to make a better product in the end. Even though it is the end of HackTJ, I do not think it is the end of this project. I plan to work on this a little more and refine it and add features, to continue and learn and practice in preparation for plenty of hackathons in the future. This was our first hackathon, and it was definitely an amazing experience.
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