saplng

Gardening is a very complex and intensive long-term task. With saplng, we help people approach gardening in a low-stakes, gamified environment to support their budding gardens in real life.

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Inspiration

saplng came about through our ideation process, where we knew we wanted to build something related to sustainability and gamification, but weren't sure what direction to pursue. When thinking upon our own experiences related to sustainability, we quickly realized that none of knew much about gardening, despite being mildly interested. With this in mind, we wanted to use this as a chance to not only learn about a topic we wanted to learn more about but also make this learning experience easier and better for other people like us.

What it does

saplng encourages users to begin their new gardening journeys with its intuitive game interface and care tips. Upon adding their plants, users can view information essential to the growth of their plants along with recommended journey paths that provide guidance for new gardeners. Upon completing quests relative to users' plants and their specific needs, experience can be gained to acquire new badges, profile customization options, and reach the leaderboards to compete with local users. For a more thorough care plan, the walk through feature provides step by step plans with supplemental videos starting from set-up to the final stages of planting. With the help of saplng, people without a background in gardening can lead a more sustainable and plant-friendly lifestyle.

How we built it

We decided to build this hack using React Native, a framework that helped us develop the mobile app using JavaScript and React. We also used Android Studio Iguana to emulate a mobile device to run our software on. We were able to create our sleek user interface using custom, specially-designed art and a component-based architecture.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into quite a few issues as we were developing our hack. First of all, none of us had created a mobile app before. Lots of research had to be done to figure out how we wanted to approach this daunting task. Another major problem was that none of us had used JavaScript before. Some of us had previously used similar languages, but it still took some getting used to.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

First and foremost, we're proud of our app's design. Everything you see on the screen was custom-made by our UX designer, Valen. All of the back-end development was done by Ryan and Jack. It took a lot of hard work and commitment to finish within 36 hours!

What we learned

We learned how to use JavaScript and about mobile app development from all angles. We also learned how to better collaborate in a group with differing skill backgrounds. This also helped us with target prioritization and time allocation.

What's next for Saplng

There are a lot of additions that we had in mind, but didn't have time to implement. A few of them include language support, profile customization, improved breadth and depth of guides, and video support. This is a project we really enjoyed and we would love to continue our work on it.

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