Inspiration
We were inspired by a research paper, titled "Relationship between emotional intelligence and empathy towards humans and animals", which focused on how a connection between people and animals fostered growth. We tied this with personal well-being and decided to make a running app, where the real motivation to run was the desire to connect with animals.
What it does
The mobile app first prompts the user to log in to their Strava account and performs authentication with the user's Strava credentials before authorizing the usage of their exercise data. Next, it measures the most recent exercise and donates a specific amount of money towards a conservation fundraiser. Depending on the user's stats, rare achievements may be granted to them, such as a badge comparing their speed to that of an animal's.
How we built it
We built our project using Expo, which is a vendor neutral app development tool. This way, our team was able to collaborate on developing an iOS app without requiring MacOS. We also used the Strava API in order to collect the user's data.
Challenges we ran into
Since this project was built using Javascript, a language none of our team had experience with, we ran into a lot of challenges with debugging Javascript code. Another challenge we ran into was the limitations of the Strava API, which only allows one user to be authorized to call the API. We also ran into an issue with trying to get the API to connect between the host and the Strava server, especially since Strava's strict necessity for a specific callback domain hindered our connection.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of successfully getting our app to run despite the difficulties with Javascript. Our app also allows for successful redirection and authentication to connect with the Strava API, and has multiple pages with various functions.
What we learned
We learned more about integrating APIs in an app and learned more about using Expo for app development.
What's next for Run Wild
We hope to successfully log user's data in real time with their Strava account and as a business model, to set up advertisements to generate revenue in order to donate to animal conservation causes.
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