Inspiration
We were inspired to build Neighbor.ly because we saw individuals, particularly seniors, being put into difficult situations where they either need to leave their homes which might present significant risk due to the current pandemic.
What it does
Neighbor.ly authenticates users and then allows them to interact with tasks in their community. Our task feature allows users to post a task, as well as view tasks in their neighborhood. When a user posts a task they can select what type of task they are looking for help with, set a time they would like it completed by, and leave additional instructions for the person who helps them. From the main page users can also view a map of their area to see where they may need to go to complete a specific task request.
How we built it
We built the front-end using React and NextJS which connects to Node.JS. For the front-end we also utilized Ant Design, a React UI library in order to help us add various components to our pages, such as forms. The back-end was built using MongoDB as our database and Firebase for user authentication.
Challenges we ran into
We encountered a number of challenges during our build particularly in the scope of our project being fairly ambitious for the given time and skillsets on the team. Due to time constraints we decided to focus on making some initial functions work within the app rather than overly focusing on the UI since we felt that building upon our skills connecting users and databases, as well as demonstrating the transfer of this information between systems, was more valuable to showcasing an MVP.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the connections that we made between Firebase, MongoDB, and React components. The work our team put into these aspects involved members solving _ MANY _ bugs and issues in the communication of these areas. It also involved different members learning new languages and frameworks, as well as applying their database knowledge in order to create the proper schemas.
What we learned
Our team learned a lot through the production of Neighbor.ly, in particular we got more experience making connections between different languages and system and got more experience in properly scoping out a project in order to make sure that it is within the timeframe we have to complete it.
What's next for Neighbor.ly
We have significant improvements that can be made to the UI/UX since a majority of our time was spent on developing the backend connections so we would love to improve the usability of the app and finish creating certain functions that would allow users to have an easier user-experience.
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