WayIn

Landing
Create Account
Choosing Destination
Choosing Destination (2)
Wheelchair Access? Y/N
Wheelchair Access? Y/N (2)
After Hours? Y/N
Map Guidance
Destination Arrival

Inspiration

As students at a large college campus, we often encounter challenges when locating available building entrances, especially during after-hours when most doors are closed or at the beginning of a new academic term. We realized that individuals with disabilities may also encounter similar struggles when seeking accessible building entrances across campus. Through WayIn, we aim to assist the difficulties of simple, everyday tasks such as navigation for all students.

What it does

WayIn is a mobile map app that locates accessible and open campus building entrances so that users can get specific directions to their chosen destination. Our most prominent feature is that it filters through the different entrances so you can choose and arrive at your destination with ease.

How we built it

We built our mobile app prototype on Figma, focusing on a simplistic and accessible UI design. The front-end aspect was integrated with Google-Maps/Cloud APIs through Visual Studio Code, where we utilized programming languages such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML. The core of our project revolved around UW’s Accessible Guide Map, where our goal was to integrate features such as locating all building entrances and discerning between accessible and normal entrances. We created an additional feature which sets us apart from other maps, where we navigate users to specific entrances which they can choose from.

Challenges we ran into

With minimal coding experience, we ran into challenges when using platforms such as VSCode and Google-Maps/Cloud APIs as we were required to implement and learn languages such as CSS, JavaScript, and HTML on the spot. Additionally, having no prior experience working with APIs made this experience challenging.

Our project contains many different elements which we were unfortunately unable to combine together given the tight time frame and limited coding experience. Despite these obstacles, we devised a viable and cohesive idea that we plan to continue building upon at UW and other university campuses.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we were able to create and design a viable, presentable project. We were able to design a final Figma prototype and idea by delegating tasks based on each of our strongest skill sets. Another significant accomplishment that we’re proud of is the knowledge and experience we’ve gained through this hackathon. Before Dubhacks, none of us had limited experience with code, but we learned how to work with a wide variety of programming languages and technologies such as APIs.

What we learned

Coming out of Dubhacks, we learned valuable technical skills and knowledge regarding Google Maps API and all of its resources and features. More importantly, we gained a deeper appreciation for the importance of teamwork. As a team of non-coders, we faced numerous obstacles, but our shared drive for success and mutual respect for each other's ideas allowed us to gauge a better understanding of what it truly means to be a team player.

What's next for WayIn

The next step for WayIn is to request access from UW for real-time availability of building entrances and implement that information to our app. We plan to utilize our Figma prototype to create a full stack development and expand our impact to not only the UW campus, but other colleges across the nation. We also hope to create WayIn as an additional feature of Google Maps to mitigate accessibility issues and redefine the current design of modern navigation systems.