On a cool Friday night during HackGT our team was walking through Tech, using the change of environment as inspiration for ideas. The ideating process somehow turned into frustrating travel stories we'd all experienced, and the one that resonated with all of us was waiting for what felt like years for our checked-in bags to come around in the carousel. We all agreed that if we had some kind of notification service to let us know when our bags were finally on the carousel, our airport experience would be much more smooth. We'd be able to grab some food or some rest before getting a text or email that told us our bags were ready. After pitching the idea to some random people we found walking around, we decided that the idea was worth pursuing.
The tool works through an airline service's login and check in services. When a user is checking in for their flight, they have the option to check in a bag or not. When they have the option to check in a bag, the option to use Mizigo would be available to users, and if they opted for it, the barcode for their bag, their username and password, and text or email depending on which they preferred would be saved. Once the bag would get off the plane, the attendants managing the bags would be able to ensure the bags that get arrived would be rescanned. If the bag got rescanned, it would check with the original data when users checked in to ensure the correct bag for the correct flight. If this condition was met, Mizigo would send a message to the user saying that their bag will arrive shortly. If after all the bags are rescanned, one of the users has a bag that hasn't been rescanned, it is assumed to be lost. Then, the user would receive a notification that their bag is lost and they'd be able to take the appropriate action to retrieve it.
In order to create Mizigo, we used node.js to get through most of the backend. To simulate the user experience (we didn't have the hardware to physically scan barcodes or access to airlines' login/check in pages), we created a webpage that would in practice be integrated into the airline's check in experience already in use. Since the webpage was to only be created for visualization purposes for now, we didn't focus as much on UI aesthetics, and focused on the functionality of it. In practice, the webpage would be replaced with an added portion in the airline's check in baggage management portal/service and the scanning procedure when the bags exit the flight. However, we fulfilled a UI for simulation purposes through HTML/CSS, and used Express to integrate our frontend with backend. We utilized the text-magic-rest SMS API and the Nodemailer API to send SMS and emails to our users.
Some of the technical challenges we faced were integrating our frontend and backend in a simple yet effective manner. Since most of us didn't have much experience creating a functional webpage with backend work, we didn't know how to integrate the two easily without having to change the bulk of our code. As a result, we had to hunt down tutorials and tools we could use to achieve this. Aside from technical difficulties, we had trouble ideating, as we had trouble all deciding on one idea that we liked. Additionally, it became difficult to continue our work as one of our team members unfortunately fell sick, and couldn't work on the project.
We were able to create a user interface that takes in the information and writes it to a data file. We were additionally able to take that data file and work through our logic, APIs, functions with it. We were able to successfully send out text messages and emails depending on our algorithm, which was the main functionality of Mizigo. However, we didn't get to connect the main functionality of our backend to the frontend, meaning that we had functional components, but didn't have the chance to put them together. Since the main algorithms and logic were with the texting and backend functionality of the app, it thus may have been easier to simply create a python program that fulfilled the functionality, as in the end, Mizigo was never about the frontend aspects we were creating.
In terms of technical skills, we all developed our web development, data, and API skills. All of us hadn't had much experience with any of these, and so developing these skills was a beneficial experience. In terms of personal skills, we all learned about collaborating under a time constraint. We hadn't met all the members of our team nor had we had a solid idea going in, so learning about everyone's wants out of the hackathon, everyone's learning and leading style, and everyone's thinking processes was difficult when we were first trying to ideate. However, this experience helped all of us go through a brainstorming process in a new, intimidating environment, which developed confidence and critical thinking skills, and developed open-minded thinking in all of us.
When thinking about next steps for Mizigo, we have three main goals for it:
- Implementation into online airline check in processes
- Functionality in the connection of both the frontend and backend of the project
- Text/Email notifications for other flight updates, including, gate changes, delays, standby movement, etc.
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