GetCivic (Fire)

Inspiration

Analyzing local and national data, we noticed that the youth population has been lacking in terms of election participation, particularly for local elections. In order to encourage the youth to vote, we wanted to aim this app to promote informal avenues of civic involvement empowers individuals to become more informed participants in local elections. Our goals was to educate individuals on engaging with their communities through grassroots governance initiatives or involvement in local organizations, rather than solely relying on mainstream political affiliations. To do this, we wanted to encourage participation in local organizations that govern communities outside traditional city council structures to broaden their understanding.

What it does

This app matches the user with local organizations based off of inputed factors like age, location, and their 1-10 ranking on how passionate they are on certain issues and areas in their community. The user can then reach out to join these matched organizations or explore other events/organizations to participate in. Our app also separates users in several character types depending on their inputed factors to "gameify" the app in hope to target the youth audience more effectively.

How we built it

We used react to build the frontend for the website and figma to create a prototype for a mobile app version. In order to create a matching algorithm to organizations, we implemented a qualtrics survery that takes the user's preferences and information. To create the character matching, we employed java to create a simple algorithm that sorts the user in several types depending of age and their indicated areas of interest.

Challenges we ran into

When choosing the elections track as our starting point, the first barrier we had to overcome was the ideation phase: it was challenging to come up with an idea that could tackle a major issue while also trying to be innovative and unique. We wanted to increase youth participation without bluntly providing information that is easily searchable online.

Another challenge we ran into was developing the website from the figma app. It was difficult navigating tools and languages that we were not necessarily completely proficient in. Thus, it was a challenge translating from one platform to another.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of ultimately creating a nuanced design and product. With our given limited time, we are impressed that we were able to carry through with our idea and develop many facets of our application.