Marvelous Byte

Inspiration

Inspired by Atlanta's film industry and Tech Together's Byte, players will partake in Marvelous Bytes, unleashing their inner hero to find Byte, TechTogether's mascot. Join Byte and Marvel exploring Atlanta's famous and historic movie locations, while supporting local businesses and charity!

Wells Fargo donated $20 million to help Atlanta small business owners upgrade their facilities, while the United Way of Greater Atlanta, in collaboration with Invest Atlanta is helping to distribute the funds with a focus on Black-owned and other diverse-owned businesses. Small businesses have persevered through the pandemic thanks to government assistance and their local communities. In an effort to further support black-owned, women-owned, diverse-owned businesses and to promote Atlanta's rich movie industry, we decided to create a Marvel themed scavenger hunt to support local diverse businesses and charities in Atlanta, while promoting local and historical Atlanta landmarks, using social media to share their journey, and having people pay it forward in their local communities.

What it does

The Marvel themed scavenger hunt features historical, cultural and local places in Atlanta where Marvel movies were filmed. Shining the light on social and economic issues, players are given clues to various locations where they will complete a task before moving on to the next. Pictures, tasks, and activities will be posted on Instagram, promoting awareness, and encouraging social change (for applicable areas). Players can redeem points for currency to support the featured local businesses with an option to round up their change to donate to charity, or to donate directly to the charity.

How we built it

We used Miro for the app mock-up, along with CSS, HTML, React and Github were used to create the landing page for the website.

Challenges we ran into

Loading React on everyone’s computer was an issue, as one of our team members was unable to install it, even with the help of a mentor and many attempts to deploy it. Sometimes, when committing changes and uploading to Github, there would be errors. Cloudinary and Javascript were supposed to be linked together in 15 minutes, but we had some technical issues coordinating the two to work together. Towards the end, we ran into some issues pushing the information back into the repo, please refer to this link for the photo being pushed. This is the link for the dropdown menu for Choose your own adventure.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We learned how to use Miro for the mock-up, created a landing page in a short amount of time, worked across different time zones (CST, EST, CET), and learned how to use React. Towards the end, we were becoming more comfortable committing and uploading our changes to Git.

What we learned

Miro is similar to Figma, and also has the ability to connect from one screen to the next. We had many ideas and features we wanted to add to our app, and had to focus on one feature. It is helpful to get the help of a mentor when installing React.

What's next for Marvelous Byte

Each month, the adventure paths and locations would change, featuring different black-owned, woman-owned, diverse small businesses and charities in Atlanta. Locations featured would have a page or website for people to learn more about social issues, and how people can be local hero's, whether through volunteering, mentoring, or learning new life skills.

Credit unions would partner with small businesses and guide them through the startup process, while the Small Business Association would help businesses to integrate within the community and help with grants. Charities would offer opportunities for people to donate their time, and people could use it to earn currency for a small business or to donate to a charity of their choosing. Financial classes would be hosted by credit unions and banks, where people earn "credit", where they can use it to spend at the small businesses, or donate to charity.

Through learning about places in Atlanta, and the exposure of social justice issues, we hope that people will use this hero journey to take an active role in their community to pay it forward and be the change. Together, we can build bridges of equity and inspiration for our community.

Thank you to Mentor Mansi, Bori, Alex, and Aayusri for helping us to iron out our idea, install react, and help us with our project!