The Kindness Challenge Demo

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  App-Screen

Inspiration

The inspiration for this project is one that everyone around the world can relate to. Shopping during this pandemic! During our initial brainstorming session, Austin and I both shared our horrible shopping experience and a similarity we faced was the lack of information. With this revelation, in addition to the stories of greedy individuals, the Kindness Challenge was born...

What it does

It is a community driven platform based on the crowdfunding information principle. Currently, it is a demo with dummy data set to New York (so don't go shopping at the given addresses!) . Users are able to access and view information like what items are being sold and where. And the users who are "kind", hopefully this would be all users, have the ability to post new shopping resources!

How I built it

Austin and I built this in the last 48 hours with about half a day of planning and preparations. Initially, we wanted to build a full-stack, working application but due to the obstacles and time constraints, we were forced to settle with a demo. It is built in React while incorporating the Google Maps api and Styled Components for styling.

Challenges I ran into

I have a one challenge that drove me insane but I'll share a mild one first. Austin and I are in different time zones and are about two hours apart, which wasn't so bad. However, there were a little hiccups along the way due to the time differences but nothing we couldn't handle! The biggest challenge was mapping over our data (array of objects) and returning a marker on the map for each object. This required us to make an API call within our .map function and the logic flow of the promise was comparable to invisible spaghetti code. Thanks to our contributors, we were able to find a solution! But this bug is the reason why I'm writing this up 30 minutes before the deadline...(hint: i haven't slept yet)

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Being a non-CS grad developer, participating in my first hackathon is definitely a milestone I won't forget! I'm proud that I was able to lead and develop this application with a good cause in mind! The reason that I got into web development is to see ideas come to life and it excites me every time!

What I learned

How difficult and stubborn the google maps can be...On a serious note, I made it a challenge to incorporate more hooks to solidify my understanding of the useState and especially the useEffect hook. I learned what it was like to put in hardcore hours and pour my soul into code. It's experiences like these that help me develop into a stronger developer.

What's next for The Kindness Challenge Demo

First, sleep. After I wake up, Austin and I will consider scaling this The Kindness Challenge into a fully functional app depending on the circumstances. I would love to this through but for now, time will tell!

Built With

• google-maps
• javascript
• react.js
• styled-components