StayAfloat

In-Person Submission

StayAfloat 🌊 :

Navigate floods safely with real-time elevation data, alerts, and AR guidance.

Inspiration 🔥:

California’s worsening flash floods expose the limits of tools like Google Maps, which lack elevation info, AR-leveraged flood warnings, flood alerts, or safe shelter routes. We created StayAfloat to help people make life-saving decisions during emergencies.

What We Learned 🧠:

People struggle to assess elevation or flooding risk under pressure. AR can enhance spatial awareness and decision-making. Accessibility must include clear visuals, audio cues, and low cognitive load.

UX Research 🧪:

We conducted a competitive analysis and built detailed personas to understand user needs during high-stress flood events.

How We Built It 🛠️:

AR features for evaluating water depth and local flood risks GPS + barometric sensors for real-time elevation Accessibility features like voice guidance and high-contrast mode

Challenges 🚧 :

Ensuring accurate AR in poor conditions Designing a simple, stress-ready interface

Next Steps for StayAfloat 🔜:

Offline mode & crowdsourced flood reports Emergency service integration for live shelter data More accessibility options & language support

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

Our cross-functional team brought together diverse backgrounds in computer science, physics, and informatics, blending technical and user-centered approaches. We were also able to overcome the fact that two of our members were brand new to design and software like Figma.

Design Process Document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QVYNsPaBQHRVqM55k3v4hc5-QRdKOIiPyN09uholPoc/edit?usp=sharing

Built With

Submitted to

UCI Design-a-thon 2025

Created by

I helped organize the UI/UX work that all of our team members contributed at the end into a final prototype.

Julian Li
I helped work on some of the Figma frames and prospected features included in our app. It was actually my first time with Figma, but with the help of my teammates, I was able to pick up some of the basic creation skills pretty easily.

Nathan Loo
I helped to majorly clean up the UI/UX and made sure the design was consistent. It was my first time using Figma. I also done a notification page which included comment section on each alert which pops up in the app.

Eric Lee
University of California, Irvine | Computer Science
Dominic Moy