- We were inspired to create an app that would be able to offer direct and immediate relief to women who are in need of safe homes. After learning how many women and children suffer from abusive households with nowhere to turn, we wanted a way to connect them with fellow women who would be able to offer them support.
- SafeHome is an app that allows those in need of a safe home to reach out to women in their local area that would be able to offer them temporary housing. Our app prioritizes user safety; we kept in mind each user’s circumstances and created filters that would allow them to find the best house in their local area to house them. As for SafeHome owners we made sure to keep their address confidential until they had confirmed living accommodations with a SafeHome finder. Both parties can access each other’s profiles and can learn more about one another in order to ensure the best living conditions.
- Firstly we prioritized researching why women specifically are victims of homelessness, this allowed us to realize aspects of an app that would resonate most with these women and make them feel comfortable seeking help.
- The UI/UX was designed on Figma.
- The front-end application was written in Java using Android Studio and collaborated on through Github.
- One of the biggest challenges we faced as a team was aligning the UI/UX components with the frontend coding, at first we weren’t too sure what constraints we had to keep in mind with designing the app so that the front-end development would be feasible.
- We also had to keep in mind certain time constraints we had, we had to make sure to only include the key features needed to make our app successful and focus more on the needs of SafeHome finders as they were our main demographic.
- Since most (3/4) of us were beginner hackers it was challenging to find a project that would work for all of us and our abilities. As a team we’re proud to have completed a working sample of what our app would look like and how it would work.
- Throughout this hackathon we were able to learn a lot about how to work as a team and how to better use different softwares like Figma and Android Studio. We learned different ways users can interact with designs and that it takes a lot of work to ensure user comfort and safety.
- Adding more features for SafeHome owners and further research to learn what would make users feel more safe when navigating the app. We would also like to develop a web version of the app so that users without a phone can access the software from a local library or tech store.