Wally

Wally, an application aimed to help individuals in Cupertino who are at risk of homelessness to gain financial stability through job opportunity & housing support, budget advising, & task management.

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Inspiration

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased unemployment, contributing to the rise of homelessness - which has come to the attention of many in the Bay Area. With the belief that each individual should receive equal opportunities in terms of employment and financial stability, we designed Wally. Wally is an application that focuses on using technology as a means to train individuals to be financially responsible through budgeting and providing resources, all of which aim to narrow the gap between those in poverty and those who are wealthy.

What it does

Auto-Budget: Wally sets a successful spending plan based on current wealth.

Resources and Work: Wally recommends food and shelter support and notifies individuals of local job openings and opportunities.

Evaluate: Wally evaluates an individual’s current progress towards financial independence.

How we built it

Aditi and Rachel designed the prototype on Figma, experimenting with colors, components, and text. The final app was created using Android Studio and was written in Java.

Aditi worked on the graphical user interface and backend development for the account registration and sign in pages - enabling the user to keep track of their activity. Aditi also built the job and housing support pages, which help the user in exploring job opportunities and shelter assistance currently available in Cupertino. In addition, Aditi created the home page, which allows the users to navigate from one page to another.

Rachel worked on the user interface and backend development of the budgeting, home, and resource pages. Working with LinearLayouts, Buttons, and ImageViews, she created a space where homeless individuals may review and edit their budget, allowing them to know the amount they can use in each category: food, resources, health, shelter, necessities, bills/debt, emergencies, and savings. Additionally, users can view their spending history to verify their purchases.

Challenges we ran into

We found it difficult to design and code an entire application from scratch while learning more about app development simultaneously. We met online to resolve textual errors and were able to resolve most problems. We worked together as a team and overcame the hindrances we faced.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to develop a user-friendly application with numerous functionalities: from providing budget advice to helping find job opportunities and enabling users to manage tasks at hand.

What we learned

In the span of a week, we greatly expanded our skill set as programmers. In addition to learning about budgeting and how to work on Android Studio, we also learned how to design user interfaces and delved into linear layouts, layout constraints, and more. Furthermore, we increased our expertise in various backend development features and explored RecyclerView and data storage.

What's next for Wally

  1. Incentivizing users to follow application advice and act financially responsible through an award system

  2. Expanding the application database

  3. Incorporating a GPS system to provide user suggestions accordingly

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