RideShare

Event Page
supabase database

The Problem

At school, at home, and events, the topic of climate change follows us everywhere, and there is a reason for it. Climate change can negatively impact social and environmental health, including clean air, safe drinking water, and sufficient food. It can also lead to the extinction of many species, including Turtles, due to rising sea temperatures. We, humans, are the leading cause of climate change, and so it is our responsibility to prevent it. After our dive into researching climate change, we discovered that a major factor that leads to climate change is the increasing carbon dioxide emission. One of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide is gas-powered cars. Gas power cars release CO2 into the air. This thickens our atmosphere and is one of the leading factors of climate change. Cars also release CH4, which has 20 times the global warming potential of CO2. According to the EPA (U.S. Environmental protection agency ), 28% of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is due to transportation.

Inspiration

The inspiration for RideShare is to address the problem of Climate Change caused by the emission of CO2 by vehicles.
Our Idea was born from the thought of reducing the number of vehicles on the road.
Coming from a big city (Toronto), every day, there are hundreds of events taking place all over. While many people use public transportation. Many people still use their personal gas-powered vehicles to attend those events.
That's when RideShare was born. Our idea was for a simple, user-friendly, and minimalistic platform to allow people attending the same event to coordinate and take the same vehicle.
We took inspiration from companies such as Uber and Airbnb to develop our application.
The goal is to decrease the amount of gas emissions by reducing the number of vehicles.
The solution is for people to share rides to the same event easily.

What it does

RideShare is a simple application whose goal is user-friendliness, allowing anyone to contribute to the battle against global warming with a couple of clicks
After completing a minimalist signup process, users have the option to find events or to volunteer their ride
If they choose to find an event, they will have the opportunity to find the event they are attending and see if anyone is volunteering to drive. In this case, with a single click of the button, they can join the carpool and reduce the number of vehicles on the road, thus reducing gas emissions.
If the user chooses to volunteer, they are asked to fill in information about the event and post it for others to see. If a user joins the carpool, the volunteer will be automatically connected to them and can coordinate pick-up and details.

How we built it

As common users of frontend Frameworks such as React and Next.Js, we decided to learn something new for this project using the newly released NextUi library. After crash-coursing through the documentation, we built a nice, minimalistic, user-friendly front end.
We decided to use Supabase, an open-source and free alternative to Google’s Firebase, for the backend. We used Auth0 to power authentication and superbase storage, tables, etc., to power the rest of the website.

Challenges we ran into

Project setup: The first challenge we ran into was the project setup. Originally for this project, we wanted to use Typescript. However, the setup for a Supabase-Typescript project did not seem to function, and we spent an hour trying to get it to work before scraping the idea and sticking to Javascript.
Application Flow: Another challenge we ran into was the flow of the website. While the idea seemed simple, we couldn’t figure out how to best implement it for the best user experience. We decided to do it on the go, and the product satisfied us.
Learning: for this project, there were lots of features we wanted to implement that we haven't previously, profile pictures, smooth UI, etc. Much time was dedicated to studying documentation, watching videos, and testing before we could finally implement what we wanted.

Despite the challenges, we persevered and brought our idea to life.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully integrated Supabase, NextUi, Next.Js, and React into a functioning application.
Developed a simple and effective way to combat climate change and SAVE THE TURTLES
Created a simple easy to use user experience that gives the power of change into the hands of any person
Overcoming many challenges, including learning new technologies and frameworks.
Gained a lot of experience and completed a project for our first-ever hackathon

What we learned

We learned the full extent of the shocking impacts of climate change on our environment.
We learned how humans and cars affect climate change and how that affects our environment.
We learned to collaborate and work together by dividing responsibilities.
We learned new frameworks and technologies for the project.

What's next for RideShare

Our next step for rideshare is to make the application more usable for people.
Our next step would be automating the coordination between the volunteer and rider process. For example, a feature that would use google maps API to calculate the best pickup spot considering the location of the riders
As well as provide more features, such as profile changes, filters, etc.
Also, to brush up on the front, make it faster and more efficient, user-friendly and usable

Overall we are proud of the project we made, but there is still a lot to work on for it to be a usable application.