WeWalk

App Logo
The first interactive page of the app, presented to the users to sign up or login. Their data is then stored in a database.
Users are provided the option to select their school for the purpose of matching them up with the correct population of users
After the user is provided with potential walking buddies, selecting one brings up the individual's information for the user's safety.
The user can rate their walking buddy for their own satisfaction and future user's reference.

Inspiration

As female freshman students at the University of Texas at Austin, we were fully aware of the unfortunate reality of the dangerousness of walking alone across an empty campus and its surrounding areas late at night. Therefore, we wanted to build some sort of software or app to help us walk home/back to our dorms more safely.

What it does

Safety is of high priority on college campuses, and this app pairs two users (students) walking in the same direction (based on their choices within the app) as walking buddies. The University Police Department (currently for UT) would obtain the location of a user so the person's safety is at a maximum. Each user is provided info about other potential walking buddies (such as their classification and major) so there is transparency between each party using the app as well.

How we built it

We decided to build an iOS app with Swift due to the prevalence of college students with iOS devices as their main source of communication. We also wanted to use a database to be able to store user info for the matching component of the application. Ultimately, we used Firebase as a system that collects each user's info as they register/log-in. We used Xcode to build the application.

Challenges we ran into

As complete beginners to Xcode's software and the Swift language, we spent a significant amount of the hackathon researching the general workings of the software and the syntax of the language. Elements that seemed simple, such as a UIPickerView, required extensive diligent programming where one wrong line of code caused build failures. We spent hours on single ViewControllers and worked through the wee hours of the night to make sure every new page of the app was up to the highest standard and worked seamlessly. Furthermore, implementing the Firebase database was a significant challenge. We were unfamiliar with the framework and workings of a database, so wrapping our head around the integration of it into our app took time. Furthermore, the integration itself required intricate commands and code that could not differ by any character. We needed to work on the command line as well to make sure we had all the frameworks to build the app successfully.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Every team member learned an incredible amount of iOS development that we would not have been able to pick up anywhere else, especially within such a small amount of time. Furthermore, we are proud of actually building a working iOS app prototype since none of us have ever done this kind of work before, let alone in such a time crunch.

What we learned

We learned an immense amount of iOS programming, Swift language, Xcode, and Firebase over the course of these 24 hours. Since our only other experience with computer science was with our intro class at UT Introduction to Programming in Java, we view our experience as very successful and enlightening.

What's next for WeWalk

We hope to implement further advanced enhancements to the app, such as making the log-in the particular school's ID system so the user's information is documented to provide the highest transparency between the potential walking buddies. That way, any "sketchiness" factor in the pairing system is eliminated. Lastly, a long-term goal for this model that we are looking towards is expanding the scope of this app to not only college students on campuses but individuals in large cities in general.