Woman Up!

iOS Profile Screen
iOS Direct Message Screen
Android Direct Message Screen
Android Profile Screen

Inspiration

As young women in STEM, we have come face to face with the discrimination in this industry way more times than we can count. Many days have ended in tears after one of us has felt unwelcome in an activity which we are so passionate about. Recently, we were fortunate enough to attend a workshop for women interested in engineering. This workshop was eye-opening. Being able to connect with people who have not only faced the same challenges we have, but also those who have overcome them was one of the most empowering experiences we know we have ever had. When we arrived at LA Hacks, one of the first questions we saw asked about problems we face in our daily lives and the second challenged us to ponder the things which our sisters and grandmothers care about. After hearing about missionaries in the opening ceremonies, we knew that we had the obligation to bring our experiences to those who were not lucky enough to attend a workshop. For this reason, we have tried to craft a platform in which women in STEM can connect across generations to overcome these barriers which we all face together.

What it does

Our app attempts to connect people through both forums and direct messages. Users create a profile and then can respond to forum posts regarding subjects of importance in their lives like discrimination or harassment. In addition, for more personal connections as well as networking opportunities, we have included a private messaging portion. This allows people to connect with those who may have interested them on the forums or with those who may share similar hobbies or passions. We feel that this app stands outs from its competitors due to the fact that it is built solely to inspire women as well as the fact emphasizes the importance of direct communications, a factor which tends to be overlooked with softwares like these. This app provides an invaluable resource for women to share their stories and provides a safe space for women to truly combat the discrimination in their careers as a team, as opposed to merely individuals.

How we built it

We built our app by utilizing Ionic. We made our pages using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. We built it by first creating sketches of what we wanted our app to look like and do and then turning these images into reality through code.

Challenges we ran into

We first had trouble prioritizing which aspect of this issue we wanted to tackle. With such a complex and multifaceted problem, we were challenged from the beginning as to how to best reshape our current reality. In the end, however we found we could not part with the impact which the Women in STEM workshop we attended had on us. After that, we faced a multitude of additional challenges. We had difficulty initially deciding on the best way to go about creating a mobile app. Only one person on our team of four had ever attended a hackathon, so we were all a bit confused and intimidated. Thankfully, the people who sat at our table proved to be an invaluable resource. They provided us advice, jokes and of course programming help when necessary. After deciding on Ionic (thanks to our table-mates suggestions), as a team, we realized that we were not extremely experienced in web design nor the coding which accompanies it. This proved to be a challenge throughout the event, although it did end up creating excellent learning experiences along the way. The biggest issue we ran into (as to be expected at a hackathon) was time. Our entire team often found ourselves attending workshops as opposed to programming. Although none of us regret this decision, with only so many hours in the day we found ourselves running out of time. Due to this we had to scale back our original idea, which was a challenge emotionally (we loved every part of our app as we were planning), but ended up allowing us to get more of a finished project out and get more sleep so it was overall a net positive.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

To be perfectly honest, as a team comprised of 75% high school students, we feel extremely accomplished to have even made it to LA Hacks. Being in the company of amazing engineers and even better people has truly shaped our weekend and has actually become a great source of pride for us. The fact that three high schoolers could even be considered next to these candidates, let alone be accepted with them feels like quite the feat. In terms of our technical side, our team is proud to have come out with an app. None of us have ever built a mobile app, so to create one in less than three days feels awesome and is definitely something which we are proud of. In addition, we are proud to be attempting to mitigate the problems in our society in an effort to make the world better for those around us.

What we learned

Wow! Where to begin? Well, for one, we learned how much we truly have yet to learn. Seeing people around us creating fabulous hacks, we soon discovered how much we have yet to figure out. We also very quickly saw how to work well as a team. From debugging and overcoming technical obstacles to brainstorming for hours as a group, we most definitely learned how to be a cohesive team. Beyond all of the technical knowledge we gained through workshops and hands on coding experience, we were able to see the importance of time management as well as how essential it is to be realistic in planning. In addition, we learned how helpful people are. Our experienced table-mates had no reason to assist us, we could not give them any technical assistance in return, however time and time again, they took the energy to explain beginner concepts to us and encourage us along the way. More than anything, we learned how much fun hackathons are and what a blast we had this weekend as we learned more about ourselves and our teammates. We definitely learned that we would love to have a hackathon at our high school in an effort to have even more fun and learn even more.

What's next for Woman Up!

First, we need to connect the front and back ends of the app. Next, we would like to flesh out some of our programming from this weekend when we are running on more than two hours of sleep. After that, we believe the possibilities are endless! We will most likely introduce our app to our local First Robotics Competition teams due to the sheer amount of young women who attended the Women in STEM workshop with us and the amount of girls in robotics, a male dominated activity. Our primary goal with this app is to help as many women, young and old as possible. Logistically, we don't know how we will accomplish this per se, but we are sure that this is a mission which we would like to continue to pursue and do our part to help solve this issue.