Magistry Youth

Inspiration

In a weekend full of terrifying statistics, the one that really hit home for a lot of us was the idea that 45% of the homeless population in the US were families with young children. It was at that point that we knew our project needed to focus on prevention, because no child should have to worry about where their next meal is going to come from, or where they’re going to have to sleep at night.

What it does

Magistry Youth is an intuitive software application for at-risk youth (18 and under) to connect with providers of preventive and responsive services. This simple client-facing app rapidly identifies risk factors and demographic information that enables Magistry Youth to quickly identify the most appropriate service providers for young people who find themselves at risk of homelessness. After a brief intake process, the Magistry Youth algorithm delivers a customized, prioritized list of recommended services from the St. Louis-regional COC.

How we built it

As soon as the brief was disclosed, the team did some additional research into the issues facing the homeless as well as issues facing continuum of care providers. Next, we brainstormed a long list of ideas and gradually whittled the options down to two: a client-facing app and a provider-facing app. We evaluated each option through three lenses: hustle (promotional considerations), design (aesthetic considerations), and hack (coding considerations).

After conducting domain research, exploring options for user experience design, and choosing the tech stack, we set up our computers and began implementing our ideas. Our writing team developed app content and the user story. Our design team designed logos, color schemes and user flow, while our development team implemented the pages and set up the database.

Challenges we ran into

Problem one: too many good ideas! Considering our very limited timeline, we determined early on that we would need to limit our scope. Also, because our diverse team members work in different languages and across multiple hardware platforms, we decided on an implementation scheme that would cause the fewest complications. As our end users will also be working across multiple hardware platforms--and often on older, less powerful machines--we believe that this self-imposed mandate for simplicity will serve to make our product more usable.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Team Nasty is a team of primarily women (6 women, 2 men), most of whom have not participated in a hackathon before (only two of our team members have ever participated in a hackathon). We are extremely proud of the diversity of our team, which can be measured in a variety of ways: gender, race, skill set, age and professional backgrounds.

What we learned

None of us came into this weekend with much knowledge about the homelessness problem. We learned that there is not a single cause or solution, nor is there any single type of person facing this terrible challenge. We were also surprised to learn that 40% of the homeless population is under the age of 18.

What's next for Team Nasty

We have assembled a solid team comprising full stack developers, UI/UX experts, experienced designers, and business professionals. More importantly, we are better informed about the homelessness challenge facing St. Louis and have envisioned creative ways to solve this problem. Throughout Globalhack 6 we have formed lasting friendships and look forward to meeting again-- perhaps at another hackathon.