WiTness

A collaborative, safe space for womxn in tech to be heard, empowered, and a confident WiT.

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Inspiration

One of the biggest struggles we face as a gender minority in tech is projecting our presence and voice. We often want to be heard by others, we want to be accepted into the tech community/industry, and we want to leave a lasting impact. Therefore, I created WiTness (Womxn in Tech-ness as in the state/condition of being a womxn in tech) to foster a positive community for womxn in tech. It makes it fun to receive daily encouragements, shout into the void, and interact with others on the forum and the hub.

What it does

  • SCREAM INTO THE VOID - Vent all your anger into a "your-eyes-only" void. Nothing stored. Nothing seen. Just type all your frustrations and trash it into the black hole!
  • DISCUSS IN THE FORUM - Participate and interact with others on the forum! Receive and give advice to the struggles that your fellow womxn in tech are experiencing.
  • DAILY ENCOURAGEMENTS - Claim an affirming quote every day and boost your confidence because you belong in tech!
  • GOAL TRACKING - Keep track of your career goals and move up the levels as you complete goals and interact with other users!
  • JOIN EXCLUSIVE PROJECTS - The more you interact with the platform, the closer you get to becoming verified! Verified users get to create and join other womxn’s projects on the hub!

How we built it

WiTness is a front-end heavy website so most of the coding used was in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All of this was coded in Visual Studio Code. The Twilio API for SMS messaging is written and ran in JavaScript and Node.js. Domain.com is used for hosting the domain on link (howevever there is still no host yet so the site doesn't work until I set the host up). Other resources: jquery, Figma, Dribbble, Ionicons

Challenges we ran into

The ideation of the project was hard because I wanted to make something meaningful but also fun and engaging. Trying to do both frontend and backend was an even bigger struggle so I tried to make a website that could function on the frontend 80% of the time and the backend 20% of the time. I didn't get to implement a database which was something I wanted to do and learn how to do during this hackathon, but I'll continue this as a personal project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I coded a lot of the base HTML and CSS in a relatively fast time and I'm proud of that because the faster I am at the easier parts of the frontend, the more time I can dedicate to learning how to use more technically advanced languages and implementing the backend in the future.

What we learned

I learned how to use Twilio API into my code. The API's that I've used so far are different than Twilio's so I'm glad I learned how to use more APIs in different ways and different coding languages. I also learned that a lot of the time I dedicated was for designing and brainstorming the project. Once I had a list of features and a wireframe of what the website should look like, I was coding pretty quickly and efficiently.

What's next for WiTness

I want to implement more backend technologies like a database and security. I'd also really like to try to host this website so I can learn how to upload websites like this to a domain. As time goes by, I hope to implement more creative ideas for WiTness to make it more engaging for the users.

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