Inspiration

  • MKN official SOP list is cluttered & not user-friendly
  • Confusion as SOPs change frequently & are region-based
  • People seeking employment and advertisement (especially small businesses)
  • Many services & volunteer projects without an - aggregator to display them all
  • Many who want to attempt their own start-ups/projects lack a platform to promote locally

What it does

  • User selects their state & vaccination status
  • SOP information is customised according to above information
  • Aggregator to improve business activity by promoting services
  • Unifies different types of services/phase SOPs in one web app for easy information access
  • Random generator to suggest fun and useful learning content

Pages:

  • Home feed: displays list of businesses & other activities currently accessible to the user, which can be filtered via tags
  • SOPs: simplified list of current SOPs specific to the user, listing what types of activities are allowed & not allowed, based on their state and vaccination status
  • Submit: form for business owners etc. to submit information for their endeavours with location/contact information & tags. Submissions will be displayed publicly on the feed once uploaded.
  • About/Contact: links to the team’s social pages, as well as links to the official MKN website & hotline numbers
  • Random generator: suggest external learning content to fend off boredoom

How we built it

  • Brainstormed problems & narrowed down to those we could tackle
  • Planned a sitemap listing all required features

Frontend

  • Began by brainstorming a UI which is simple to understand at a glance (user-friendly), in contrast to a cluttered display
  • Layout aimed at less tech-savvy members, given a more visual presentation like pictograms to accomodate language barrier
  • Simple infographics for SOP page acting like a summary
  • Designed scrolling feed that users would be familiar with by emulating popular social media
  • On all pages, we fixed a header as a dropdown selector, & a footer as navigation menu

Backend

  • Use Python Django as Backend
  • Create a Django App for each uses: SOP details, Business activities as blog feed, Login user system, Random generator for learning resources
  • Apply Model-View-Template pattern

Challenges we ran into

Challenge 1: Coding collaboratively as a team

  • Hosting a website on our own individual computers is not efficient for collaboration & communication

Solution 1: Coding collaboratively as a team

  • Use repl.it IDE to code collaboratively and to host the website

Challenge 2: Technical issues

  • Branch issue: The github extension on replit does not support coding on different branches simultaneously. Changing a branch will cause all collaborators to be transferred to that branch, losing all changes that have not been pushed or committed.
  • Problem with pull & merge on Github. Doesn’t sync with replit
  • Network issues, some loss of progress as different team members update the project out of sync

Solution 2: Technical issues

  • Minimise the number of members working on the same page concurrently by dividing tasks & periodically checking back on each other

Challenge 3: Execution & Feasibility

  • Manpower issue with updating SOPs in real-time

Solution 3: Execution & Feasibility

  • Possible partnership with government bodies to provide
  • Possible automation with web-scraping.
  • Each solution also brings up other factors to be considered:
    • Must consider what returns MKN or other government bodies will gain from the project text-recognition software may not be reliable, so still requires manpower to check for accuracy

Challenge 4: Unique selling property

  • Our website has to provide unique value that helps users the most

Solution 4: Unique selling property

  • Combination of social media and informative web app UI
  • Understandable UI design (e.g. Icons representing SOPs instead of lengthy text)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • Previously, most of us had no experience in web development. We have learnt a ton about frontend development and Python Django.

What we learned

  • An appreciation for how difficult it is to create a social media site & info aggregator
  • An appreciation for the manpower required
  • We cannot cater to every demographic & solve every issue, so it is better to specify a target & deliver an effective, specific solution
  • The importance of simple UI in providing a satisfying UX
  • Getting important features done first before spending time on less important details
  • Getting clear communication between front end & back end to ensure everyone has the same understanding of functionality before splitting into groups

What's next for MySOP

  • Consider more potential risks and issues before settling on an idea
  • Better UX via:
    • Better searching function
    • Algorithm to recommend content to users based on tags they have followed/engaged with before
  • More efficient method to gather latest SOP details
    • Web-scraper or partnership with government sources (MKN)
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