Oasis

Emergency shelters are overpopulated with scarce resources. We provide the affected with adequate living conditions.

Comment

Inspiration

In recent decades, the advent of natural disasters is more anticipated than ever. Mitigating the effects of climate change is currently an overshadowing problem. However, we also need to readjust our focus on how to manage the effects of climate change, as the implications are very immediate and detrimental.

Many people who remained in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina did not do so willingly. They had no other option. Fourteen percent of people affected had a physical disability and fifty-five percent had no access to transportation. With our app, we aim to create a oasis-- a safe place where these affected victims can take time to recover without the burdens of cost or inconvenience.

Five years ago, two members of our team were directly affected by Hurricane Sandy. One was trapped in her house when a tree fell, blocking her exit. The other had no access to electricity or WiFi for a week. These experiences shed light on the terror felt by those who have no escape. With Oasis, we provide this escape.

One definition for oasis is 'a place where one can find safety and sustenance'. Our colour palettes were created specifically to challenge the norm of red colours being associated with anything that has to do with emergency or crises. We wanted our app to provide the same ambience its colours exude: 'this is only temporary, things will be okay soon'.

What It Does

Oasis provides temporary residence to those affected by natural disasters with an accessible app that match all kinds of people. When people download the app, the login screen gives out two options. You can register as a host, or you can be someone who will be matched.

Hosts will fill out a questionnaire that focuses on five aspects of accessibility: the amount of people they can provide refuge for, whether their place is wheelchair accessible , dietary needs, allergens, and languages spoken for overcoming language barriers.

How We Built It

A team of first-time hackers and high school students with diverse opinions and some to no experience in coding (though none whatsoever with software dev), we wanted to make an app from scratch. We had no knowledge of suggested software , and found a program called Adobe XD that allows people to create an interactive platform to execute their ideas.

The first half included educating ourselves on the problems existing around emergency shelters and natural disasters. The second half was brainstorming ideas on how to solve said problems, and to execute our solution.

Three of us collaborated on different aspects of our app: one person built the part for the host registration, another person worked on the registration process for the people who will be matched with a home, and the third worked on the actual platform experience for when the registration is finished.

The other two members focused on research and product development: reading news articles, wikipedia pages, statistics, and creating our powerpoint on Google Slides.

We used tens of hundreds of Google searches, from going on Adobe forums to learn how to make buttons and screens interact, to watching YouTube tutorials.

We downloaded UI / UX kits one after the other, and there was a huge jump in the learning curve after learning the fundamentals of Adobe XD.

Challenges We Ran Into

The first day, we had a sense of what content we wanted our idea to have already. We came across multiple mentors to ask for feedback on how we could do it. Our team debated on whether to create a website, or an app. 17 hours later, we decided on the app.

We did not know how to use Adobe XD, and none of us has ever touched it before.

We had 31 hours (not including sleep, meal times, etc.) left to learn it. We were in a huge state of panic, pressure, wondering if we would even end up with a project at all. Lovely would pass on her learned knowledge to Liana, Liana would pass it on to Ivy. Before we knew it, we enjoyed suffering through the multiple mistakes. From finding out that something that took us three hours to do could take five minutes using a different method, we continued and braved through laughable experiences.

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

We learned how to use a new program and created an app with multiple functions and exactly 80 screens. We were able to execute our solution and come up with a finished product.

What I learned

UI / UX Design, Adobe XD, Team Collaboration with newfound friends

What's Next For Oasis

We would love to reach out to volunteers to be able to bring people needing shelters to their home destinations if they can’t reach a bus stop, train station, or homes that aren’t within walking distance.

Built With

  • adobe-xd
Share this project:

Updates