Project Takeoff!

Inspiration

In our everyday lives, we are constantly exposed to pollution and waste caused by humans. These issues have an impact on our lives in almost every area. From climate change to health risks, aircraft pollution has reduced the living quality and conditions for many individuals all across the face of the planet. The issue with this is that aircraft is extremely important exploring the solar system, transportation, and making observations and learning about the world around us. These benefits that the capability to fly has caused are immeasurable, so to ensure the safety of ourselves and the environment we live in while simultaneously maintaining our ability to use aircraft led us to create an app that ensures that people are aware of how their lives are impacted by aircraft pollution and offering solutions to this problem. Additionally, it is important take care of what we bring into space, as we are unsure of what risks this could introduce.

What it does

Project Takeoff! is an interactive educational game that allows players to choose from a variety of different aircraft and displays the aircrafts impact on the surrounding environment as a result of the flight process.

How we built it

We built our app using code.org because our team was already familiar with its interface and development environment, which allowed us to efficiently design and create the app. With our existing knowledge of the platform, we were able to easily implement the features we wanted. Additionally, we incorporated Python for more complex logic and functionality, ensuring our app had the flexibility and interactivity we needed. The app's design was structured using different elements and screens, with each screen representing a distinct part of the user experience. We carefully coded the UIs for each screen, displaying relevant information. Finally, we integrated these individual screens and interfaces together to create a seamless flow, synthesizing the app’s different functionalities into a cohesive and intuitive experience.

Challenges we ran into

The main issue my team ran into was problems with coding the game that we wanted to create because we have little to no prior experiences with coding.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of the things that my team is proud of is creating code that could run. Despite its' simplicity, the code gets the job done and portrays to an extent what we would want our game to potentially look like. Another thing that we are proud of is our use of resources and creativity throughout the process. We like the components that are game combines, as we believe it makes our game unique by applying learning, fun, and in real time data educate its' users.

What we learned

During this project, our team learned about the intricacies that accompany creating a new app, as well as solving the issue of pollution in regard to space and aircraft. One of our main struggles that we encountered as far as the content of the app is solving the issue rather than just confronting it. However, we believe that raising awareness is the first step in sparking change, so even though the app is mostly educational, we believe that it could make a significant impact. Also, we learned more about how coding is applied in the creation of apps/websites.

What's next for Project Takeoff!

Project Takeoff is an app that we believe possess a lot of potential. We would make this app more engaging and solution-oriented by including more real-time data on aircraft around the world and information on their emissions and environmental impact. From this, we would also want to provide actions that the users can take to help combat this challenge to change the focus of our app from just merely education to action as well. Also, we want to integrate an area on the app for user feedback, and public suggestions to help solve or mitigate the environmental damages caused by aircraft. Lastly, we would like to make the flight information more specific on the educational part of the app, and everyday actions/alternative traveling options to reduce emissions.