Renewify

Renewify is a quick, accessible and efficient way to determine if objects are recyclable. It promotes competition and education among users.

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Inspiration

In our community, and any other community around the world, it's starkly obvious that there is a serious issue of objects not being properly disposed of. Our goal with Renewify is to promote and educate our users about proper waste management.

What it does

Using ReciclAPI, Renewify is able to efficiently detect an object from an image and inform the end users if the object is able to be recycled.

How we built it

We split into smaller groups based on our individual strengths, and heavily emphasized communication and collaboration in order to make sure all group members were working cohesively.

For design we used an industry level design tool, Figma, to create a user-friendly and accessible user interface. The Figma file was then transferred into Thunkable to start programming.

The programming team utilized a well known block coding software, Thunkable, to program Renewify. We implemented databases such as Firebase to add further functionality to our app. We also used Clarifai and ReciclAPI to implement image recognition into our app.

The creative development team followed up with the programming and design team set specific deadlines to make sure all teams were on track. This team also spearheaded the research portion of the competition by utilizing our local waste management resources and services. Using this research, they created an outline for the app demo and pitch.

For the pitch video, we used our individual perspectives that we gained in order to make the video reflective of the whole development process.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge we faced in this competition was not having a project manager. Because of this, it was difficult to ensure all group members met their deadlines. We overcame this by implementing a Scrum like system, that included a project manager, about halfway through the competition to ensure that everyone was on task and meeting their deadlines.

Due to lack of prior connections, another major challenge we faced included finding professionals relating to the recycling industry that would help assist the research portion of the project. Our final research ended up including a variety of sources, but the most notable came from released federal and municipal resources.

On the app development side, we faced major complications when we tried to upload our final design on Figma to Thunkable to start implementing code. With help from our intern we were able to piece out the previous flaws until we could upload a functional file.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

While this is a beginner competition, we implemented advanced techniques such as image recognition AI and databases. With the help of our intern, and our prior coding experiences, we developed a good understanding of these advanced softwares. We are proud of this accomplishment because not only are these skills important for professional programers, knowing how to properly implement and use AI is soon to be industry standard.

What we learned

Any team, including ours, is able to list hundreds of technical skills that we have learned because of this competition. The most important skills that our group learned, however, were the skills you can implement everywhere. Not just while developing an app.

Learning how to be adaptable is an issue that arises due to selfishness. People become engrossed in their own ideas but forget about their teammates. At first, this was something we faced in our app building process, someone would plan out a whole piece of the project without keeping the other members and practicality in mind. Throughout the competition, we have learned to be more open minded and adapt to other people's ideas. We heavily relied on communication and openly giving constructive feedback and criticism to ensure we all were adaptable to each other's ideas.

The ability to stop procrastinating and effectively plan out a project, better known as time management, intimidates everyone. Through ReadySetApp we were able to learn how to develop a constant schedule, and how to stay consistent with a task over a set time frame. Using the provided softwares such as Slack and a group time management document, we were able to learn how to professionally plan meetings and set deadlines, keeping the group on task, and making sure no one fell short on their role.

What's next for Renewify

Our app is far from done. We hope to further develop our app by increasing the accessibility even more. We plan on doing this through adding a dark/high contrast mode, as well as a more immersive text to speech reader. We also have plans to add profile pictures, allowing for a cleaner looking leaderboard design.

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