Inspiration
One of our main inspirations for Along the Way was road trips and the unique and wacky things you can sometimes see whizzing past out of the car window. Additionally, we were inspired by our own struggles in finding interesting places to see on our own visits to unfamiliar locations. Building out this app was really an attempt at helping us any other use build out their itinerary whenever and wherever they're going in the most convenient and easy-to-use way possible.
How does it work?
Along the Way first takes a starting location and ending destination and maps the shortest route for you to take. Then, the web app allows the user to add in search filters for types of places they would like to visit along the way to their destination. These include Food & Drink, Lodging, Entertainment & Landmarks, and Shopping. Additionally, the user may describe their preferred journey to the DeepSeek LLM to better filter their preferences and tailor the results of their search. After polishing their desired journey, the user can press update and after a brief delay the app's map will update with colored pinpoints and descriptions of a sample of places they could consider on their route.
How We Built It
Our app was built using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and React for the frontend, and Python for the backend. We used the Google Maps and Places API and OpenRouter's AI API.
Challenges We Ran Into
An early challenge we ran into was figuring out how to best split up the route that we mapped and locate the points of interest we wanted the user to see. We settled on using Google Maps' Polyline and searching in radii around segments of the polyline to best approximate a continuous search for interesting places for the user to visit. Additionally, later into the WebJam, as we were increasing the complexity of the project, we were also running into timing constraints, occasionally timing out our queries, so we implemented filter limits and wider polyline segments to reduce the API and processing overhead, being especially relevant for longer routes.
Accomplishments that We're Proud of
We're the most proud of what we were able to learn in terms of APIs, team work, and problem solving. We are also pleasantly surprised by how much we were able to accomplish given that the entire team was extremely busy throughout the entire WebJam. We were also able to meet our minimum, nice-to-have, and extension goals, so our planning and hard work really shone in this regard.
What we learned
We learned a lot more about APIs and connecting frontend and backend technologies to create a cohesive website. Additionally, we experimented and heavily considered the end-user experience when working with a routing app that can greatly improve one's trip experience. Interestingly as well, the vast majority of the team is decently rusty in web development, so we had a blast refreshing ourselves on our skills and learning some new frameworks along the way.
What's next for Along the Way
There is quite a lot of future potential for Along the Way especially with regards to efficiency optimizations and the numerous avenues that opens up for more customized routes and more opportunities to showcase more relevant and diverse points of interest. In addition, our app has the potential to elevate and update anyone's road trip planning skills by possibly including planner functionality to note and save interesting places to visit.
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