koi: an ios app that revolutionizes how everyday people measure water consumption and waste.
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Download this repository:
git clone https://github.com/rishkosna/koi_final.git
Every day, 95 percent of the water used in the average American home is wasted every day. In fact, the average household unknowingly wastes upward of 100 gallons of water every day. These results are shocking, and frankly upsetting, in a world where water shortage is nothing short of a serious issue. In fact, by 2050, it is predicted that 1/5 of countries will face a water shortage.
But that doesn't mean this problem is insolvable. This is where koi comes in. By making individuals cognizant of their personal water usage—be it in the shower or in the laundry room—we can provide actionable insights that can cause a ripple effect. Could a world in which people don't have to worry about their next sip of water be a reality?
koi is a mobile application that revolutionizes how everyday people measure water consumption and waste. Everyday, the user simply completes a 1-2 minute survey that tracks their water usage: how many minutes did you spend in the shower today? how long did you water your lawn for today? And so on. From this information, we provide insights. Using our ML-driven algorithm, we give the user a score (from 0 to 100) as well more specific analytics (trends over time, tendencies of user, etc), that will ultimately empower them to make more conscious choices about their excessive water usage. And what makes koi so special? Our virtual aquarium. Each user has an "aquarium" on their home screen that ranges from dark and murky, to bright, colorful, and full of sealife, solely depending on their current score.
We all have the most experience in backend development and data analysis, making us lean towards using Python as a main driver for the algorithm itself. On the other side of things, we opted to use Swift to develop the frontend of our mobile app, as it enables the speed and level of interactivity we were seeking.
One of our main challenges was getting comfortable with using Swift. None of us had extensive experience utilizing Swift to develop larger scale mobile applications, so there was definitely a learning curve involved in getting comfortable with Swift development. Another challenge we faced was determining how to best integrate our Python backend with Swift--we quickly learned that Python + Swift don't mix well because iOS doesn't have Python built-in.
We're very proud of the fact that we learned and developed quickly in a language quite unfamiliar to us. And, of course, we're proud of the aesthetics of the virtual aquarium of the app--a visual representation of a user's current water usage relative to other users.
We learned how challenging, yet important, it is to determine early on how the features of an application connect to one another, and how to effectively integrate the backend to the frontend. By answering these questions upfront, we can focus on implementation and logic. Finally, we learned how teamwork and constant collaboration in software design and development doesn't simply improve efficiency, but it allows us to ideate and develop products better than we could have ever imagined.
Better features, and more features. We want to continue to clean & develop our code. The next feature we're most excited about is introducing a social aspect to the app with a Friends page. Each user can view their friends' aquariums and see how their performance compares, providing further incentive to log their stats and improve their water usage over time. Beyond that, we want to keep working on ways to make koi more fun! One idea we had was to make the aquarium dynamic and customizable, with moving sea life and an option to buy new creatures using an in-app currency earned by completing the daily survey and reducing your water usage.