Inspiration
Thailand is a world-renowned tourist destination. The country's landscape is made up of lush jungles, gorgeous beaches, and sprawling mountain ranges. There is however a flip-side to all of this beauty, incredible amounts of waste.
Upon visiting Thailand you will undoubtedly take a trip to one of the thousands of 7-11 convenience stores and witness the insane mentality towards plastics. Purchasing 1 candy bar? The clerk will put it in a plastic bag. Purchasing 1 tube of toothpaste? In it goes. You want a soda? It's going in a bag, with a straw! It's not just the convenience stores either. Head down to your local market for a bit of meat-on-a-stick and that stick is going in a bag, which is put into another bag! Order a refreshing Thai Iced Tea to wash the meat down, that's going in a bag?!
As you can see we've got a bit of a waste issue on our hands here. Curbing this attitude towards plastics was the inspiration for our application, Raccoon Challenge.
What it does
Raccoon Challenge takes a two-pronged approached to improving the environment.
The app's first goal is to educate. To do so we've gathered data regarding waste production here in our home country of Thailand. Then we've plotted this data using the ArcGIS mapping platform in the hopes of spreading the word about our current waste problem. Users are able to search and retrieve data regarding the amount of waste produced in each province. Armed with this knowledge hopefully users can make more conscience decisions in regards to their own waste production.
The second goal is to provide a fun and easy way to help reduce the amount of waste each person produces. Follow our little friend Rexxie the Raccoon on a quest to save the world! Each day Rexxie will assign a simple task for the user to accomplish in the hopes of creating a greener tomorrow. For example, "Be straws free all day." Straws are usually an unnecessary waste of plastic. By avoiding straws for a day we've planted a seed for the user to be more aware of their wasteful habits. The app will then allot a time period for the task to be completed. At the end of that period the user marks the challenge as completed or failed. A weekly progress bar tracks the user's accomplishments. Try to keep our buddy Rexxie happy!
How we built it
Our development process started with a short series of brainstorming sessions, which led us to the idea of the app. After that we used a collaboration of technologies to implement the Raccoon Challenge application.
Our designer used InVision to draw up a rough wireframe. Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, and Sketch 3.0 were all used for the graphic designs and animations. Finally, our designer created the demo video using Adobe After Effects.
Mobile development was done using the Swift language for iOS. Database management was implemented using the Parse cloud infrastructure.
Challenges we ran into
The time limit was our number one challenge. Having roughly 2 weeks to conceive, design, and develop the app (all while some group members had to maintain their regular workloads) proved to be a bit difficult.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're quite proud of the look and feel of the application. Also, we mustn't forget our pal Rexxie the Raccoon!
What's next for Raccoon Challenge
We would like to increase the number of countries with mapped data.
Increasing the number of challenges offered to the user is also on the to-do list.
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