Walk Through History

You don't have to be in a museum to Walk Through History

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Inspiration

Welcome to “Walk Through History”, a groundbreaking web app that seamlessly integrates cutting-edge technologies such as Svelte and OpenStreetMap to redefine how we engage with Black history. Our mission is to illuminate the rich tapestry of Black heritage by guiding users on an immersive journey through significant historical sites, both well-known and hidden gems. With meticulous research and curated content, we strive to provide comprehensive descriptions and insights, allowing users to connect deeply with the stories, struggles, and triumphs of the past. Join us as we embark on a transformative exploration of culture, resilience, and the enduring legacy of Black history.

What it does

Walk Through History takes existing routes people have created, and lets the user walk to each location based on a common theme. An example of this is a Route labeled "Medicine" that starts at the Saint Agnes Hospital, goes to the Leonard Medical Building, and continues to other important medical areas related to black history. At each of the locations when the user arrives, they will be able to see the description and comments that go on about the history of these locations.

It helps people both learn more about the history and bring appreciation to black history.

How we built it

Walk Through History was built using several technologies, including HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Python. One of the key technologies we utilized was OpenStreetMap, which is an open-source library used for creating mobile-friendly interactive maps. We integrated OpenStreetMap into our website to provide users with an intuitive interface to visualize and explore the locations of historic locations.

Additionally, we used HTML and CSS to develop the website's front end and create an appealing and user-friendly interface. Python was employed for our data analysis on the declining rate of visitors coming to the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art.

Overall, our use of these technologies helped us to create a functional and effective website.

Challenges we ran into

During the development of Walk Through History, we encountered several challenges that tested our problem-solving skills and technical abilities. One of the main obstacles we faced was the lack of data of easily accessible data on nearby historic locations to create existing routes, we overcame this by doing in-depth research and in the process learning more about the history of Raleigh.

In addition, we encountered difficulties when learning new technologies such as OpenStreetMap, as it was a new concept to us. Despite these challenges, we persevered and learned how to integrate OpenStreetMap into our website.

Overall, despite these challenges, we were able to develop Walk Through History into a valuable resource for discovering black history]. Through innovative problem-solving and a commitment to excellence, we overcame these obstacles and produced a website that is making a positive impact on the history of African Americans.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have accomplished the integration of OpenStreetMap, a powerful library for interactive maps, into our website, allowing users to easily visualize the placement of historic monuments and locate general directions to them. We believe that this feature adds a user-friendly aspect to our site, making it easier for individuals to access information.

Furthermore, we are also proud to have developed our algorithm to only render nearby historic locations, this enabled us for the app to run quicker and overall become more efficient for the user. By developing our algorithm, we were able to tailor our approach to the specific needs of our users and understand the inner workings if something goes wrong.

What we learned

Throughout the development of Walk Through History, we encountered various challenges that helped us learn a lot. One of the main lessons we learned was that the fastest way to complete an objective is not always the best.

We implemented a system to detect if a comment, description, or title was hateful by using sentiment analysis. This was the fastest way since we could simply look online and find documentation of existing projects that have used it. But, as we were testing to see if the analysis worked, we tested it against a dataset of existing hateful speech over 60% of the time it didn't block the negative speech.

Instead, we learned how to implement a novel AI such as Google's Perspective AI which when tested against our dataset, only failed around 1% of the time. This jump in performance showed us the fastest way to complete something isn't always the best way and we plan on trying out new use cases for this AI.

What's next for Walk Through History

In the future, we aim to expand Walk Through History to cover a wider range of cities around the country, to help even more people discover black history around their areas. We also plan to improve the image detection for obscene photos and make sure they are not part of the platform. Additionally, we plan to explore partnerships with local governments and organizations to gather more data and create stronger networks to add to our locations.

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