Inspiration
The inspiration of our app comes from a global issue of poor recycling and inefficient waste management, but the issue that really sparked us was the incredibly high amount of plastic waste in the Pacific Ocean. Extremely high amounts of plastic waste are in the Pacific Ocean, and we wanted to make a change in the right direction. Our app also has an audience of young people and children, because we know that young people, like us, will make all the difference in future generations, and that starts with education.
What it does
Our app works to educate the youth about recycling, specifically about types of materials that can be recycled and more elaboration on that. Our app has nine different screens that are used. Our first informational screen explains basic information. The following 3 slides explain the four types of materials that can be recycled, which we explain through the app. Finally, at the end, the user gets to go through a quiz, where they can choose easy, medium, or hard. Their results are given, and more information about recycling is given. To make the app easier to understand with current events, we added a “Slide of the Week” in which recycling news from each week, updated daily, is shown.
How we built it
We decided to build our app in code.org, due to the experience that we have in code.org. In AP Computer Science Principles, code.org was the platform used, so we had a lot of experience on it. We made nine separate screens, adding design elements like text, dropdown menus, and images, depending on the slide. We would meet up together to code and design our app. Our coding consisted of many onEvent functions, due to our next, back, and home buttons. We also made sure to use for loops, if statements, and variables, which made it easier to get the app to function. Navigation through the app was extremely important to us, so we made our back, next, and home buttons, to ensure the user could get to whatever slide they wanted to be on as quickly as possible, without being complicated. Therefore, we made many onEvents. We really liked the complexity shown in code.org, while also being not too difficult to have great code in!
Challenges we ran into
One challenge we ran into was calculating the score of a user after they take a quiz. Since we have 3 different quizzes, the same calculate button wouldn’t have worked. Therefore, we added 2 other calculate buttons and stacked them. We made them all hidden, and made it so that one would show, depending on what the user selects. Quiz questions were also hidden until the user selects something in the dropdown menu before the quiz. Another challenge we ran into was with a problem we had with our “Choose a slide” dropdown menu. It wouldn’t actually change slides at all, which really concerned us. However, after troubleshooting, we learnt that we had put it all in as lowercase instead of uppercase. It was such a small mistake, but it made such a big difference! Even with all of our problems, we were able to work together and find the solution.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are really proud of the fact that our app will educate all sorts of people about recycling, and we hope that our app will lead people to do volunteering with recycling and to get them to recycle more. The education that people, especially children, will be getting from this app is really what is needed so much to change the status of our world and save our one planet. We are also really proud that we were able to make the app both educational and amusing, which creates an amazing balance that makes recycling so enjoyable to people!
What we learned
As we were reading an article about the Great Garbage Pacific Patch, we realized ourselves that we didn’t know much about recycling. Throughout making this app, we learnt so much about recycling. For example, none of us knew about the different numbers for plastic recycling, and we were all so shocked to learn that most numbers of recycling can’t even be recycled! The research we conducted for this app gave us so much more insight on a major problem our society is currently facing.
We also learnt so much about coding. Through making our app, we learnt about conditionals and for loops. Coding this app has made us much more interested in computer science, since we all loved the problem solving aspect that came with making this app!
What's next for Recyclone
We want to keep Recyclone in development and open to suggestions from user reviews. Specifically, one thing we wanted to add in the future was a recycling game, where users can compete with real life users on a fun game that further educates people and inspires them to be a part of recycling efforts. We also wanted to add a database where a user can select the exact item they have, and the app can tell them whether that exact item is recyclable or not. We know the database must be very large, so we are still working on it. As users give us suggestions, we will add even more, taking our app past the horizon!
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