NeighborHack

Connecting with your neighborhood community!

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Inspiration

For this challenge we were requested to build an application for those in a local community to connect with each other. We determined that neighbors are very capable of helping each other in their local community especially with avoiding crime. Because of that, we thought they could help in other ways. Not only did we want to create an app to connect a local community, we also wanted to allow people to tell their neighbors of anything that might be helpful, such as providing local services, notifying local law enforcement, detecting road hazards, and also just letting their neighbor know of any fun events going on in the community.

What it does

We built a social media platform for neighbors to connect on that allows people in the community to message and collaborate with each other. In addition, users can check out events, volunteering, and reports around the area with an interactive map.

How we built it

We leveraged ReactJS, Google Material Design 2, openstreetmap, GitHub, and VSCode for rapid prototyping process and a fast-paced collaborative environment. These technologies are battle-hardened with good documentation to boot!

Challenges we ran into

With the front-end, we encountered many issues with React props not being passed properly and also components not being displayed properly and so we had spent a lot of time debugging these issues.

Before implementing openstreetmaps, we first evaluated the Google Maps and Search API endpoints for data visualization and sample data. Early on, we realized the API scope was too broad for demonstration purposes. This proved to be a wise time saving decision.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Completing a presentable and modern UI for judges to see with actual functioning demo is something we are very proud of.

What we learned

We learned that leveraging standard design language tooling for designing the look of front-end features really saves time on developing projects and also the importance of collaborating on issues is essential to delivering an MVP.

What's next for NeighborHack

We plan on scaling this project by further standardizing and hardening the source code and carefully considering proven, scalable database software.

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