LaVoyage

Need to take a break? Don't have a lot of time to plan or days to take off? LaVoyage inspires and takes over the tedious planning, so you can relax

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Inspiration

We were inspired by our talks on how vacations could be really stressful at times because you don't know what to do but don't want to waste your time. We thought this would be a great project considering that summer is starting and more people are starting to go on trips, get annoyed at their family members and at themselves, and have the entire experience become a nightmare instead of a dream. We had also heard horror stories about 60-80 hour workweeks and people falling into dark spirals because of all the pressure put on them and how much a vacation would help but they were too scared to take a long break. Thus came the idea for LaVoyage, a website that would plan out the itineraries for you that would only require a day for you to follow- packed with ample rest, exploration, and meditation to ensure the best for the user.

What it does

LaVoyage is a website that highlights a "Spot of the Month" each month. This is where we go in-depth about one location every single month- customized blurbs, packing lists, and itineraries galore! When the user clicks on either the packing list or the itinerary, they will be able to customize it to their liking- adding and subtracting anything they want from the list. We give them a few things to start their list with, and they simply add to or edit it to their liking on their own. Since we take care of all of the planning, all the users have to do is pick a date and have the time of their lives! We also wanted to add in a guided meditation video that would be tailored to the destination of the month (ie- Since Avalon is a beachy place, "Feel the waves crashing down on the sand") that would be delivered via Twilio call, but could not actually implement it due to time and experience constraints.

How we built it

After tinkering with Twilio for a while, we prototyped the website using Figma. built the website up using HTML, CSS, Vanilla JS, and Boostrap. We added the index homepage with the newsletter signup section (we thought we could be able to implement Twilio by then but could not). The JS was mostly for the two list sections of the website, but we did use some JS to build up the navigation bar.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest issues was not having enough time to get the results we wanted. We wanted to make something grander, with a phone number you could call in order to get a guided meditation video tailored to the place of the month using Twilio, but weren't able to. It was something we were truly devastated by, but we kept charging through. We also had quite a problem because one of our team members was based in EST while the other was based in PST and we worked on the demo video rather late at night. This meant that the EST teammate had to stay awake until 2 a.m their time to get everything figured out before the early morning deadline. The project was also due at 5 a.m PST, so the PST teammate couldn't have waited to submit the project until morning. We also had an audio problem while recording the demo video, because whenever we tried to record through Zoom, the presentation was always muted and we didn't know how to change that, so we had to get creative and use Google Meets and Vimeo recorder instead. We also ran into many problems with the code itself- from not being able to figure out why the HTML elements were updating with the CSS traits to not being able to update the div element correctly, but we are proud to say that we have pulled through and made a good program that we think has the capability to help many people.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were both pretty proud of the fact that we experimented with Twilio and that we both really liked how it opened up many paths that were previously closed. Twilio is definitely going to be something both of us carry with us throughout our entire hackathon careers because of how useful it is in so many different manners. We are also proud of the fact that we built the entire website in a single day- something we didn't think we would be able to do before, so we're pretty proud of ourselves for breaking up all our doubts and submitting a project we thought was pretty good for someone our of our age and experience. We also are proud of the fact that we branched out and tried venturing into some unknown territory

What we learned

We definitely had our eyes opened to all of the great computer science technologies that once seemed too intimidating for us to use. We spent a lot of time using the same old languages and frameworks, but this time, we branched out and ventured through new waters. Even though Twilo may not have been a part of our final project, we still loved it dearly and are certain we will use it in the future. We also learned how to solve problems within a clear mind and how to compromise to ensure we get our work done. We also learned how to create a functional checklist using JavaScript, a language we don't use too much in our other works. This really built up our knowledge on the language and gave us a good grasp on what to do in situations like those and how to treat learning new languages/concepts.

What's next for LaVoyage

We definitely want to go deeper with the itineraries. Adding cost brackets, if the user is more of a homebody or an adventurist, and filtering previous spots by location are all features we would love to add onto LaVoyage to make it more inclusive of everyone. The mindfulness/meditation calling feature is also something we are actively trying to incorporate to the website and hope that we will be able to figure it out. We would also like to make the itinerary design more customizable, so that people would be able to drag their schedule together if they would like to arrange it in a different way than is already pre-arranged. All of these features would greatly improve user experience and make the process of going on a DayCation and taking a break a whole lot easier and stress-free.

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