Terra Save

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Inspiration

Our main inspiration for our hackathon project stems from our personal experiences as consumers. We believe in the importance of sustainability and try to seek out sustainable products whenever possible, but often find it difficult to identify and locate them in stores. Sustainable products are not always advertised or promoted as prominently as other products and can be mixed in with other items on the shelves. We also found it challenging to know which specific brands are truly sustainable.

We realized that e-commerce sites could be the best and easiest way to purchase sustainable products, which led us to develop Terra Care. Our project aims to provide a platform for finding and purchasing sustainable products with ease. In addition, we added extra features to address other issues, such as high costs, that consumers might face when trying to adopt a sustainable lifestyle.

What it does

Our team was asked to determine an issue that corresponded to a particular element (Eart, Air, Fire, Water) and develop a solution to that issue. Our chosen element was Earth and we ventured to improve our use of land and resources as this plays a major role in the displacement of communities and wildfire. Essentially, our goal was to encourage sustainable and responsible consumption of resources by providing an e-commerce platform for those particular businesses that also provide some educational material and current events tailored to each user. We strive to take the work out of shopping sustainably by providing consumers with pre-vetted brands and point rewards systems to help them get their products for less. We want our customers to enjoy their shopping experience by purchasing the products they love, with a platform that cares!

How we built it

Initially, we began by brainstorming, drawing and planning various potential layouts for our application. After deciding on what we wanted our application to look like, we turned to Figma to collaborate on a prototype from which we could model our application. We then began working on our demo application and attempted to include unique features provided by the tools we learned in the workshops at ElleHacks. We were able to learn new design concepts as well as tools in development.

Challenges we ran into

Debugging: Finding and fixing errors and bugs in our code was a major challenge as the codebase was large and complex. Time management: Since we were trying to incorporate and learn two whole new programs, co:here and Autocode, time management was a challenge. We really had to work hard on ensuring we would be ready by the deadline. Learning curve: Additionally as stated before, we had to learn a whole new framework of code. Thus learning the ropes was a little difficult. However, through preservation and the mentors' help, we were able to succeed.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our main accomplishments is the successful implementation of our app interface using Figma. Before developing the interface, our team spent time brainstorming and planning out the details and features we wanted to include on each page. To further visualize these ideas, we physically sketched out designs for each screen on a blackboard. This step was time-consuming, but it was crucial to ensure that our team designers could seamlessly incorporate all the features we originally discussed. As a result, our app interface is exactly what we envisioned it to be and more, and we are proud of this achievement.

What we learned

From this project, we are grateful to learn several important lessons. A critical one is an importance of taking action. Our resources are continuing to run out however the amount of action and awareness surrounding these issues are so minuscule. We realized if humanity continues to walk down its current path disaster would undoubtedly strike. In more technical terms, through this hackathon, we learned more about Open AI, APIs, and Machine Learning Software. We gained more information on possible applications we could use in the future.

What's next for Terra Save

Through the implementation of tools such as Autocode's API builder and co:here's content validation, we aim to streamline our processes. We endeavour to improve our application such that it better resembles our prototype. In the future, we aspire to connect with businesses that share our ethical values to make better deals available to our consumers.