Wander

Inspiration

Wander draws on the innate human desire to connect with eachother, explore, and seek new perspectives. The more you explore and contribute to the ever-growing photo collage, the more pieces you uncover. It encourages us to ground ourselves in our local community, and Wander in the beauty of the world we live in.

What it does

Every user starts with an empty map - a clean slate. Wander will track your location and reveal the map as you walk around, creating a path of where the user has been. At any notable location explored, users can take a picture and upload it to their map, revealing the pictures surrounding that location that other users have uploaded, and contributing to the collection.

How we built it

We used React Native on Expo, backed by Supabase to sync the data and photo uploads across devices.

We used Reve to modularly design the UI and manually edited it with it's design tool.

The fog around you is a SVG sitting above the map, so other street names hide under cloud. Markers such as pins and the explorer are projected onto the map's internal overlay to prevent them from going out of sync with the actual data.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was choosing the right technology for the time we had. We initially started building the app in Swift, but we quickly ran into issues with builds and testing that were slowing us down. Rather than spending valuable hackathon time trying to work around these problems, we made the decision to pivot to React Native/JavaScript. This allowed us to iterate and test much faster while also giving us the flexibility to support both iOS and Android.

Another major challenge was developing an entire app in just 24 hours. With such a tight deadline, we had to constantly prioritize what was essential to the core experience and what could be left out. We adapted our plans as we encountered technical roadblocks, divided tasks based on what each team member could accomplish most efficiently, and focused on getting a functional version working before refining it. Being willing to change our approach instead of getting stuck on our original plan was ultimately what allowed us to turn our idea into a working product within the 24-hour timeframe.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The map UI is awesome! We're also happy that it syncs up between devices so well :)

What we learned

wow the guys at scopely are GOOD

What's next for Wander

Hotspot recommendations - Travelling nearby a human hotspot (where many more photos are taken) will appear on the map a pin, a point of interest you may want to check out.
Share your progress - Share an image of your accomplishments as an explorer
Upload after - Upload your image with a location after you've already been there! Just like Beli :)