When we came up with the idea for this project, our goal was to have the greatest impact on people and the planet as possible. One of our primary inspirations for this project was a game we developed for ShellHacks last year, InfoVenture. That game was focused primarily on helping underprivileged youth find information that would otherwise be difficult to obtain. We knew that we wanted to create another platform for social good, and after some deliberation on the part of our members, we landed on OneWorld, an interactive one-stop shop for everything charity.
OneWorld is a platform that allows you to find charitable organizations to make donations to. It's able to display key information about charities that you search for, like the focus of their work, their website, and most importantly pictures of people they have impacted. It not only allows you to find the names of specific charities using filters like "Natural Disasters" or "Social Justice" it leverages Apple Maps API to produce a pin on the specific area that a charity is working in. Each pin reveals a world of information about a charity and offers the capability to favorite charities that you have a special connection with. OneWorld really shines in its ability to allow the user to add their own charities to the global map, allowing us to edge even closer to the vision of creating a more connected world. At its core OneWorld is the search engine and map for the betterment of the world, and we're grateful that we were able to make it a reality!
OneWorld was built using React Native, a JavaScript framework for making fast, efficient components intended for mobile application development. We also utilized an app called Expo that allowed us to test our React components in real-time. We made requests to the Apple Maps API in order to render our map and use the longitude and latitudes of our charities to establish pins. We also utilized Github for version control and Trello to maintain a solid workflow within our team.
We ran into a lot of issues with dependency downloads. Because we had one person using Linux, one person using Windows, and two using MacOS, dependency downloads were slightly different for every member. Despite This, however, we were all able to get working environments together and contribute to our project. Also, half of our team was their first dive into Github as a platform for version control. In addition to having to learn the process of cloning, pushing, and pulling, a lot of time was spent on resolving merge conflicts that inevitably occurred using the platform.
We were able to adhere to the plan we set out in the beginning fairly well and managed to complete our project with nearly a full day to spare. In addition to that, despite the inexperience of some team members in the beginning, we are also proud that everyone was able to contribute something to the project. Aside from just those accomplishments though, were very proud of the fact that we were able to create something with the potential for social good.
Throughout this project, members of our team were able to learn React Native, JavaScript, JSON, GitHub, Trello, Expo testing, and API Requests.
Moving forward we love to have the opportunity to do the following:
- Expand our repository of preloaded charities to accommodate for more people's interests
- Include more filters for more niche kinds of charitable organizations
- Create a direct donation interface within the app
- Expand to include web app integration to allow for more ways for people to interact with our project
I was a majority back-end developer for the project and front-end as well. I used JavaScript and React Native for development, and then Git/GitHub for version control. I mostly worked on the functionality for the maps system, creating markers, and also the UI elements.
I was a frontend developer for the project and learned to use JavaScript along with React Native in order to create components including the interface for creating new charities and for favoriting charities.
I mostly conducted research on charities and organizations around the world, extracting real data to be used for the app. I also contributed to the front-end development, particularly making the launch page and helping assist UI choices.
I was a developer for the backend and frontend of our project, utilizing my knowledge for JavaScript and React Native to deliver all of the components of the UI. I played a large role in pipelining the data extracted from our database toward the core functionality of our app while utilizing Git to ensure integrity and organization.