Yvonne Search - Research Portal

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Inspiration

I have recently came to the realization that on traditional search engines or archives, oftentimes publicize or puts more emphasis on works or experiences pertaining to women or gender minorities, that are shared by people who are not women nor gender minorities. My problem with it is not that people are sharing their second-hand understanding of the dynamics, struggles, and stories of women and gender minorities but rather that they are getting more exposure, than those who actually go through said struggles. I feel that their voices are being muffled and I thought this hackathon would be a good opportunity to amplify said voices.

What it does

Yvonne essentially takes the input from the user, sends it to flask for processing via a POST request, and then returns it through results.html. Flask holds the curated list, that is then returned in results if anything was found.

How we built it

I built it by first working on the HTML homepage and then learning the backend logic of Flask because I did not know how to use Flask before the competition but I knew python, but did not have enough time to learn JavaScript so I thought it would be more realistic to go and learn Flask while doing the actual work. I learn best via hands-on learning and when the stakes are at their highest.

Challenges we ran into

It was initially quite difficult to read Flask and learn how it worked but once I did everything was pretty smooth sailing for the occasional bug when working with loops and the inputs but nothing that put a huge time dent into the project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm proud that I was able to do this all by myself on the biggest stage and when the stakes have never been higher, and was able to rise above. I'm proud of the fact that I made a literal whole search engine from scratch. I'm proud that I learned flask and can now use it in other projects. I'm proud of how well I managed my time to be able to produce a functioning website.

What we learned

I learned that it's okay to feel we're not ready for something that's bigger than us, but it really all comes down to how we respond to insurmountable challenges and odds.