Settlemize

An isometric decomposition of our application's web pages!

Inspiration

When finalizing an idea to pivot on, our group found it rather difficult, considering that there was no specific theme for this year's hackathon. However, we decided to go with mitigating an issue that hundreds of thousands of Canadians struggle with; life after immigration. We were inspired by one of our group member's experiences with a family friend's recent move to Canada. Said group member began to witness, first-hand, the sheer number of difficulties that they soon encountered. This included struggle to find housing, inaccessibility to transportation, English professional incompetence and unemployment. With that said, our group was motivated to create something to improve the well-being of all immigrants coming to Canada.

What it does

Settlemize, derived from the words settlement and optimize, is a website that targets two of the most common struggles that immigrants face, the language barrier and unemployment. In order to combat a newcomer’s ineptitude with English and/or French, we created a section where the user has the ability to watch tv shows/movies and listen to songs in either of Canada’s official languages (English or French). Depending on the country that the user emigrated from, subtitles in their language will be displayed along with the English or French entertainment. In addition to this leisure, we offer access to courses and modules that teach the user the foundations of English. As for helping with unemployed immigrants, we have a built-in job search section that the user is able to navigate in order to find positions they may be interested in. Several filters are included to ensure the best and most accurate results!

How we built it

Since our entire group consists of first-time hackers, the majority of our project was built using the Figma API in order to capitalize on our specialties in UX/UI, and to ensure that we could have a finished product by the deadline. Though no coding was involved in the Figma prototype, extensive editing, problem-solving and discovery were entwined in the process. That being said, we wanted to incorporate any prior coding experience that we had in order to create a snippet that was functional. After completing our prototype, we coded a semi-operating graphic user interface using Python tkinter.

Challenges

During this hackathon, we encountered many obstacles, one of which being the time constraint. With a deadline of 2 days, we were forced to brainstorm and develop our idea with little room for error. We needed to create a project that was not only complex, but something that was innovative and would clearly differentiate our group from the rest. This recurring thought was the result of the many changes in our final design. We began this event attempting to build a website using HTML, CSS, and Java Script; however, we soon realized that our lack of experience in these coding languages would make this merely impossible to do in 36 hours. As a result, we moved over to another software, Figma. This API system allowed us to create and design our interactive website, but there was only one issue, no physical code was involved. With less than 24 hours, we chose to divide and conquer by delegating tasks. Half of our group focused solely on Figma and the other half created one last prototype using Python GUI. With little to no experience in this field, it felt like we were set for failure. Yet, with the help of resources such as stack overflow and google tutorials, after a gruesome 36 hours, we had finished!

Accomplishments

During this event, we truly learned the importance of coming together as a team in order to overcome obstacles. Keeping constant lines of communication and a positive attitude allowed us to never give up and to continue to put our all into this project. Ultimately, all of us were extremely proud of our final result, considering our lack of experience in the Computer Science field, lack of overall tech-savviness and lack of knowledge regarding all of Figma’s features. After everything, completing this hackathon was truly an accomplishment in itself and something that none of us will forget.

What we learned

None of us possessed the individual skill(s) needed to formulate a multifaceted business plan and website/app in less than 36 hours. Thus, this taught us the importance of teamwork, communication and delegating. Although we all lacked coding experience, all of us brought knowledge and our own life experiences to the table. We liked to think of it as an analogy of a puzzle, where we all had pieces, but we needed to put them together in order to produce a quality end result. Even though we are currently inexperienced, many of us aspire to work within the software development/computer science field in the future and through this hackathon, we were able to see how important resources are to a developer. We soon discovered stack overflow to be our best friend, learned the cruciality of never shying away from asking questions and the sheer importance of having a network that is willing to help guide you along the way.

What's next for Settlemize

Our plans for future expansion revolve around addressing other issues that immigrants face, including (but not limited to) housing, accessibility to medical services and ease of transportation! Furthermore, though we value to always put our users first, we began to think of potential profitable opportunities that Settlemize might implement going forward. Having access to such a vast range of movies, tv shows and songs, as well as having a database will be costly. The easiest way to subsidize these costs would be to charge a one-time, monthly or yearly fee to our users, or look into website monetization. Nonetheless, we have the utmost confidence that Settlemize has tremendous opportunities for growth!

NOTE: THE PREDOMINANT PART OF OUR PROJECT IS OUR FIGMA PROTOTYPE