What is your project’s name?
Our Android application’s name is “Crevention.” This submission is by Vicky Min and Varsha Swamy.
Link to Youtube, Vimeo, or online video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUCxlVgOgyo&feature=youtu.be
Category: Social, Educational, Game, Beginner?
Beginner
Inspiration for the problem you are addressing?
Violence is becoming increasingly prevalent in today’s world, as can be seen even yesterday with the shooting of singer Christina Grimmie. With all of the news stories about shootings, kidnappings, and other violent crimes, we realized how important it was for people to have an easily accessible method of finding out which places to avoid for their safety. Nowadays, a smartphone application is arguably the most convenient method of accessing information, so we decided to create an Android application where users would be able to look at “danger ratings” of potential tourist locations where 0.0 is the least dangerous and 10.0 is the most dangerous, compiled by expert data as well as other users.
How does your project positively impact teenagers?
When we were planning for our application, we intended for it to not only benefit teenagers, but all members of respective communities as well. Therefore, the advantage of our android application can be used by all members of a society. We want to foster a safe environment for all, and hope to do this by spreading awareness, as many people may not have immediate access to the data that Crevention attempts to provide.
What are your Project Features?
The Google Maps API we implemented did not include many automatically include many of the features we programmed. For instance, as many users already know, Google Maps includes a search bar. However, for us, we still had to write our own code for both the search bar and the locating of the cities. In addition, we added the ability for the users to rate the cities themselves, as well as search for different cities and their respective ratings.
What did you use to build your project? (language, API's, libraries, etc)
We used the integrated development environment (IDE) Android Studio in order to create the Android application. We specifically used the Google Maps API in order to provide a basic Google Maps basis, which did not automatically include a search bar, location markers, etc.
Any problems encountered?
At first, we tried to exactly follow a YouTube tutorial that showed a step-by-step procedure for implementing the basics of the Google Maps API on Android Studio. We soon realized that technology is constantly adapting, and that it would be impractical for us to try to follow a tutorial from an older version of Android Studio. After struggling with the tutorials we could find online for at least four hours, we were feeling frustrated, so we asked for help from a mentor, who showed us how to separate the code into multiple files. After that step, we were able to go through the now much better organized code ourselves and figure out where to write blocks of code as well as how to write them.
What have you learned?
We have learned that it’s a much better experience to create something as independently as possible without trying to follow something step-by-step, because not only was that impractical for us, but we also would not have been able to create unique code if we did that. By creating our own code (for the most part), we were able to create something that we could be justified in feeling proud of. In addition, we learned that sometimes, it’s important to accept guidance from people who can make your life a lot easier when you do the next steps independently - in this case, a mentor. Before we walked into the the library to start coding, we thought we could handle the entire process ourselves, but when we received aid from Vybhav, we realized that other people could help us think outside our previous mindsets.
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