Tamazotchi

Inspiration

As time passes, and climate change progresses further, it has become increasingly clear that we cannot solely rely on individual sustainability to mitigate the environmental crisis at a meaningful scale. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), since 1988, 71% of global greenhouse gas emissions stem from just 100 companies worldwide. Many companies, however, still prioritize profits over the environment. Unfortunately, there are currently no major regulations or frameworks aimed at keeping corporations accountable for making sustainable decisions.

That’s not to say that individual sustainability isn’t important — it still plays a key role. However, we do not have many ways to keep in touch with how our friends and family are staying sustainable on a day-to-day basis. As a result, many individuals may feel less motivated to keep up with sustainability as time passes.

Tamazotchi aims to solve all of these problems by providing a fun and cute social platform for companies to share their progress toward sustainable goals, and for friends and family to share their sustainable actions with each other. For corporations, Tamazotchi will motivate them to achieve sustainability goals for a positive public image, and for individuals, Tamazotchi will motivate them to stay consistent with their sustainable practices. In all spheres, the community aims to keep everybody accountable and excited about sustainability.

What it does

Tamazotchi is a social media platform that allows users and companies to share their sustainability stories and earn cute badges for their chosen Tamagotchi along the way. Users can earn sustainability points whenever they post an image of their sustainable actions to the feed and be featured on the Tamazotchi Leaderboard.

Tamazotchi features a secure email-based login and signup system, a settings page to choose a character and update profile information, and photo upload/posting system. Users can send each other friend requests and accept/decline them, like posts, and report posts. If a post is reported 3 times (i.e. for false information/lying), it is taken down. Posts are not publicly available (your sustainability images will not be shared with others) unless you add friends on the app. Additionally, it features a feed that can be filtered for companies or friends. There is also a leaderboard cultivating friendly competition between users to complete sustainable actions.

How we built it

We built a database using Firebase and Firebase authentication. For our tech stack, we used Flutter to develop on mobile. We split tasks such that each person worked on different pages and features at one time.

Challenges

Half of us had prior experience with Flutter, while the other half was entirely new to it. There was a learning curve, especially with widget hierarchies, state management, and dependency installation issues. Additionally, we had challenges with a flaky database connection and a mismatch on the documentation and how the code compiled on our local desktops.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that we implemented a comprehensive system for adding friends, and filtering posts. Additionally, we are really proud of our badge system and how it rewards both users and corporations, and emphasizes the sharing of progress. Also, we really love the little Tamagotchi profile pictures and symbols!

What we learned

Flutter
Data management with Firebase
Integration of frontend and backend
UI Design

What's next for Tamazotchi

There are a lot of features we’d like to add to Tamazotchi! Below is a list of some of these:

Give users anonymous pictures to verify and award badges for verifying other users’ posts
Unlock special clothing accessories/profile backgrounds, themed with sustainability elements
Add more measures of sustainability!
Add verification for becoming a company account
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