Inspiration
Our idea was initially inspired by the problems of unknown dangers such as spiking and walking home safely at night. We later found out there are at least 170000 people going missing in the UK each year and while most were gone missing more than once according to research. When an incident happened, it might be difficult to notify everyone around you other than you friends and family.
What it does
UNITE is a tracker with an alert system for users to notify their friends and family when they were out and inform the people around them and the police when they are in danger. The software involves community effort and the police to efficiently searching for the missing individuals.
When the user is going out, they will login to the system and a temporary contact list will be created for users to add contact to inform them. If the user returns home safely, they can logout to the system and the temporary contact list will be removed after 24 hours once everyone has logout. If not, the user or their friends and family could sent an alert to the area near the missing person and report the incident to the police.
We only retrieve user’s coordinate when the tracker is activated and collect the data at an interval for privacy purposes. Usernames will also be computer-generated to improve anonymity and account security.
Each users will required a verification code from the police as part of the registration to prevent false reporting and police involvement if necessary.
How we built it
We build the web app using HTML, CSS for frontend and Javascript for backend. With the use of several APIs such as Twilio and Geolocation.
Twilio API is used to send message and communicate with different phone device, and Geolocation is used to track the user location by returning longitude and latitude.
Design frameworks involve bootstrap, and we tried to implement some aspects of HCI and UX principles to ensure best user experience.
Challenges we ran into
Challenges include the use of Twilio and Geolocation API as it is relatively new to use, building the databases for the system as it requires many sets of them, and user-orientated approaches such as privacy and security concerns. When we were doing our research some users suggests they do not want to provide their locations to the third-party maps, e.g. Google Maps, for privacy concerns. Therefore, we tried to reduce the problem by only uploading their coordinate every 60s to the database when the tracker is activated, and the GPS will be off when the user has logged out. We also realises authenticators are very complex and infeasible to build at current stage so we decided to use human resources instead
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are very proud of our team work and resilience to build the entire project within the duration of the hackathon. We managed to include every basic key features including the databases, frontend and that the whole system is functioning properly at current stage
What we learned
We learned to apply Twilio and Geolocation API to make our project works and also building multiple databases using JSON. Other than technical aspects, we also learned the importance of accessibility while designing our UI and we tried to make accessible to colour disabilities by using monotone and shapes.
What's next for UNITE
In future development, we want to develop a compatible app for every platform and implement a map for users to check their current location. Other than adding new features, we will improve our alert system so that specific incidents around you will also be informed, and built an AI authenticator for the automation and reduce the human resources. For the UI improvement, we will aim to make it minimal and clean, and ensuring the accessibility for every user by reducing the use of colour.
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