Play Pals

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  Start-Up Screen

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  Dog Registration

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  Dog Map Location

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  Dog Quiz

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  Dog Quiz Question Sample

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  Dog Quiz Results

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  Dog Results

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  Dog Facts

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Inspiration

Dogs, like humans, are social creatures. Imagine if we can easily bond and create memories with our furry friends and other humans by sharing photos and arranging playdates locally. We're taking the relationship between dog and dog, human and human, and dog and human to the next level with Play Pals.

What it does

Play Pals fosters a vibrant community for proud dog owners to update and share profiles of their dogs as well as form connections and coordinate playdates for their furry companions. The app allows users to include their contact information as well as their dog's profile section including the dog's name, breed, and age. The user can fill out a personality quiz for their dog to match with other dogs by viewing their profiles with an option to reach out to the owners.

How we built it

To build Play Pals, we used Android Studio to design the front-end and back-end of the phone app using Java. We summarised and compiled a lot of different knowledge about dogs, such as their height and weight, etc. We also made our test questions and results on dog personality through many papers on animal behaviour. We initially aimed to integrate the Google Maps API for tracking the user and their dog's location, but due to time constraints, we couldn't fully realise this goal. Consequently, we opted for a temporary solution by focusing on a specific area and using a screenshot with a red circle as the radius as the local network area for dogs.

Challenges we ran into

Since the majority of us were new to Android Studio, we ran into many challenges along the way. Creating a personality quiz for dogs had a lot of uncertainties in terms of accuracy and how we would like to generate a result at the end for the user. However, we started small with seven questions and two options, and built on from there, creating a cumulative score based on the responses chosen. As well, we could not successfully configure the Google Maps SDK in Java, so we implemented the temporary solution of replacing the map area with a screenshot.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We believe that it’s amazing for us to accomplish what we did accomplish in 36 hours, considering that Hack Western 10 is the first hackathon for most of us and we were beginners with Android Studio and app development. For those in our group who were familiar with web development, it was interesting to see how some of those skills could be transferred over to app development and for those that aren’t, we were able to take on completely new concepts and one as expansive as full-stack development. As a result, all of us, regardless of and despite experience and skill level, were able to hone our coding skills and become familiar with more technologies while meeting our goals.

What we learned

In our project, we gained a comprehensive understanding of Android app development, primarily through hands-on experience with Android Studio. We learned to navigate its interface, honing our ability to write and debug code specifically tailored for Android applications. Our design skills were also enhanced as we forced on creating user-friendly interfaces, understanding the importance of intuitive design and effective resource management. A significant part of our learning revolved around implementing various functionality, where we mastered the use of Android’s built-in functions and libraries, enhancing our application’s dynamic features. Furthermore, the project was a lesson in collaboration and management; we improved our teamwork by effectively using version control systems and exercised our time management skills by balancing different development tasks within our project timeline.

What's next for Play Pals

For Play Pals, we aim to successfully implement the Google Maps view for users to see dogs and owners within their area when location service is activated. If this is successful, we would want to be able to track our dogs in case they are missing and have lost dog postings. We would also like to create a feature for dog adoption matching suggestions, building on from the dog personality profile.

Built With

• java