nEARby

Inspiration

During our discussion of what theme we wanted to do for the project, we needed help finding something that clicked. Then One of our team members mentioned that they took American Sign Language at her local community college. They emphasized the importance of raising awareness of Deaf culture and promoting events. Then we clicked to create a map-based website to raise awareness of upcoming events in the deaf community and promote deaf-friendly establishments and services.

What it does

We aim to develop a map-based app that raises awareness of Deaf-friendly establishments, services, and attractions in a given area. Travelers can use this app to find sign language interpreters, Deaf-friendly accommodations, restaurants with Deaf staff, and other accessible facilities.

How we built it

We started designing in Figma to nail down our ideas and make the implementation smoother. We collected data on deaf-friendly establishments, services, and social events into a spreadsheet, then into a database. We built our website using React, and once we worked out the routing between pages, we started building our designs.

Challenges we ran into

We first used Google's free MyMaps since it could import data from Google Sheets, but we needed help to track when or where a user clicks on the embedded map on the website. So we started over using Google's Javascript Map API, which we were unfamiliar with but could do what is needed we needed. We also ran into time issues since our work schedules conflicted. We are beginners in web development and could have spent a few more days figuring out how a flexbox works.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We accomplished our first hackathon with a product that works! ...mostly. Using Figma, Kanban, and GitHub helped our asynchronous collaboration and navigated our scheduling issues.

What we learned

We learned what goes into making a simple website, from designing, researching, implementing, and especially debugging pain. We also learned to work in a team on a tech project with a short time limit.