Inspiration
RakyatTogether website is inspired by our real life experience of trying to read up information around the country related to the COVID-19 pandemic and National Recovery Plan. When we want to know the latest SOPs or local authority updates, the different authorities such as MITI/JKAV/KKM/MKN, have their respective websites. Although we can use Facebook/Twitter to read about the latest posts, it can be a distracting process too as there will be other posts on the said social media. Recently, some of our team members dealt with being a “Close Contact” individual where our family members were infected by COVID-19. Speaking from experience, it was quite tedious to look up for detailed information on where/how to perform a swab test, sanitise/disinfect the houses, if going to the quarantine center is optional etc. Also, since March 2020, Malaysia has never fully opened up the economy sectors. Rakyat regardless of age, gender, or race, faced all kinds of difficulties. Physically, mentally, economically. When we have spent quite a long time working/studying from home, technology has played a very huge role in our lives. In relation to the theme “Coding for good”, we think that this “good” that can be achieved is not about eliminating COVID-19 immediately, or thinking of resuming lives to older days(i.e. pre-COVID-19). In order for the nation to recover socially and economically after the impact of COVID-19, we have to move on and adapt to a new norm, where we have to coexist with the virus. We want to build a platform where all the latest information/updates of the wellbeing of the country are exchanged, so anyone in the country can contribute as an information provider or be well-informed.
What it does
Our platform serves as a one-stop hub for communicating with our fellow Malaysians with a priority on welfare and communal unity. RakyatTogether aims to facilitate non-entertainment discussion and propagation of information regarding vaccination, public announcement, food aid, and other forms of services that we must learn to handle in a recovering nation. Posts have a limit of 500 characters to keep things short and succinct. Posts get to be liked and disliked, influencing the visibility of these posts on the website. To ensure utmost integrity of the posts on the platform, there will be moderators that patrol the website for any posts that violate the rule. From an economic standpoint, the jobless can also restart their job search by perusing the vacancy feature of the website, furthering the efforts to jumpstart the economy. Stores and startup companies that have been threatened significantly during this challenging period can also take the platform as a means to connect with the local community and spread the #supportlokal vibes. Posts are limited to a single tag, allowing for efficient and expedited surfing of our website-- get exactly what you want without the frills. The website will also have local authorities as verified members of RakyatTogether, and their posts will be highlighted and why posts they like will be brought further to the top of the page for more viewing.
How we built it
First of all, we wrote out our ideas on Google Jamboard with sticky notes, then we eliminated ideas that were not workable. Before we finalize our decision, we discussed all the details we want to go into and seek the mentor’s approval. For the actual coding, we utilized VS code and eclipse IDE to work out different parts of the project including the front end interface using html, css and bootstrap. We also used MySQL along with java, JDBC and DAO implementations for the backend database of our website. Google map Javascript Api is also used on the implementation of location services. Lastly, we also used the ProCreate app to design our website logo.
Challenges we ran into
The biggest challenge that our team faces is the time constraint imposed by the hackathon rules which is having to eliminate and refine our ideas and then work it out into a partially workable product in the form of code. Besides, our team was not equipped with a broad variety of technical skills which in the end limited our choices of end products we could move on with. Given only 24 hours, we can't afford to learn a new skill that was not in our portfolio from scratch. Therefore, we have to make the most out of all the skills we currently have.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that we came up with a solution that is praiseworthy in the eyes of our mentor as he gave his approval during the mentor session. We are also very proud of how much of our actual app that we have coded in less than a day, while also preparing for all the presentations and demo links all at the same time. It is the first time we joined a coding hackathon with such a short deadline, but we believe we gave our best this time.
What we learned
Equipping ourselves with the attitude to never stop learning and picking up new skills in our free time will be helpful going into the workforce. Attending this hackathon made us realise that our university degree alone does not provide enough preparations for us to advance into society. A lot of initiatives must be taken to increase our skills on a personal level, so that our technical skills match up to our imaginations.
What's next for RakyatTogether Website
AI can be implemented to enhance and help the moderators regulate posts in the website. All posts are initially evaluated by AI algorithms to find out its content, and if it is found to be entertainment related, it will be forwarded to the human moderators to confirm if it is appropriate to be left on the website or taken down. This will ensure that the distractions of random posts that prevent people from getting information that are actually useful are reduced to the minimum. After a good amount of data is collected and the AI algorithms are trained enough to maintain a low degree of errors, this process could be fully automated. We hope that after releasing this application, we are able to find future collaborations with different organizations or e-commerce platforms such as Grab or foodpanda to expand our horizon and give us a source of revenue through advertisements and make this project self sustainable.
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