ReUnited

Our Community, United Again.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for our project came from the realization that people often struggle to find the information they need about a city, especially when they're new to it. This, along with the rapid proliferation of the decline of the sense of community is what gave rise to ReUnited. As a team, we wanted to create a solution that could help people find what they need quickly and easily, as well as ReUnite the people, and bring back the lost sense of community.

How we built it

We decided to use Flutter to build an app for the frontend, while using Google Firebase and Python for the backend. Flutter, being a powerful tool for creating cross-platform apps that work seamlessly on both iOS and Android, really allowed us to bring our idea to life. On the other hand, the simplicity of Firebase and Python made the already difficult process a little easier. During the process, we learned aspects of Python and Flutter we had never imagined before. Not only we expanded upon our skills but also discovered how Python and Flutter can be seamlessly tangled together and give rise to such a beautiful app. Other than this, we used GCloud run and Gcloud's NLP library for analyzing the text inputs.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we faced was training the chatbot to be able to understand and respond to a wide variety of questions. We used machine learning techniques to train the chatbot, but it was a time-consuming process that required a lot of trial and error. However, we were able to overcome this challenge by using a combination of machine learning and rule-based approaches, which helped us to create a chatbot that is both accurate and responsive.

Another challenge we faced was designing an interface that was intuitive and easy to use. We conducted user research and tested our app with a variety of different people to get feedback on the design and make adjustments as needed. Through this process, we were able to create an interface that is simple, yet effective, and that allows users to quickly find the information they need.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall, we're really proud of what we've been able to create with our project. We've built a chatbot that can answer a wide variety of questions about the city, and we've wrapped it in an app that is user-friendly and accessible to everyone. We've learned a lot about the power of Flutter and the challenges of building a chatbot, and we hope that our project can be a helpful tool for anyone looking to explore a new city, while developing a sense of community.

What we learned

We learned how different technologies can be used together to create one single powerful product. We also learned the entire process of building a chatbot - from looking for data to train the chatbot on, to using Machine Learning for the most accurate answers. We also improved and learned a lot about our pre-existing skills - Flutter and Python.

What's next for ReUnited

We believe we would like to make Suzie more robust, and give her more abilities such as locating the nearby hospitals, schools, etc. Apart from this, we would also like to promote eco-friendly products more, and maybe we could have an entirely different section for eco-friendly products.

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