Find It A&M

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project came from our own confusion about where things were on campus. We're all freshmen at one point. Everything at A&M is so big, so it's difficult to find basic necessities sometimes. This is where Find It A&M finds a solution to this problem.

What it does

Find It provides the user with a map with all of the niche things one could possibly ask for. It filters items based on the user's choice and also provides added instructions.

How we built it

Our web framework was Flask, we stored the data in JSON, we utilized HTML/CSS and Bootstrap to style the website, and the map API we used was Google Maps API. We worked on it as a group through Github.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into some problems at the start when trying to figure out how to even put the map on the website. The Google Maps documentation was confusing and tricky to use, especially for first-time users. But through a mentor's help, we got through it. Another problem we had was thinking of whether to use SQL or JSON for our database of items and locations, but we ended up on JSON because of its simplicity. Another problem we had was figuring out how to place the different markers on the website, as we didn't know there was a necessary file import in order to even show the markers; but through some stack overflow, that problem was able to be fixed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're happy about the markers and how it's able to filter all the specific markers you want, as we feel that the methodology was complicated but rewarding to figure out in the end. We're also proud of our simplistic database, as it is extremely simple to add more items and their locations on our Find It website.

What we learned

Group collaboration - especially through Github. We also learned how to utilize data science and databases - we each learned JSON. We learned that web development is harder than it looks.

What's next for Find It A&M

Next, we need to expand our database so that we'll be able to provide more locations and items to students. We also plan on changing the UI so that it looks more aesthetically pleasing.