Gather
Overview
I participated in my first hackathon, Hawaii Annual Code Challenge(HACC) as a team The Johnson Family. This year’s theme was sustainability, and our team chose the challenge, waste audit. The problem was that University of Hawaii Department of Sustainability does not have an efficient method to store and visualize the data they collect through the waste audit.
So, we presented two pronged approach, a software that named Gather and a hardware that named Smart Bin. The web application Gather features that an easy input form, a submission providing a delegated approach to data entry, and accurate statistics.
The Smart bin helps to get the weight, volume, and count of waste with little effort during the waste audit.
Unfortunately, we did not get a prize, but our team kept working on the project to improve our app Gather.
My Contributions and Thoughts
As a front end team member, my most contribution to this project was the submit data part that included input and display forms. I used JavaScript and React to develop my parts. The form was very simple at the beginning, but it became dynamic inform as the app improved by backend team.
For example, the dropdowns of event, building, location, category in the input form are dynamic. The select options show the same list of event, building, location, category from the database. Whenever the event is added into database (or deleted), the select options automatically display up-to-date list.
I did not have experience with back end so that it was challenge to understand and use them into my code. Especially, submit data is the important interface that connects between user and database. So, I had to study how whole system (front and back ends) is working.
Also, I realized how difficult to work as a team. It is not because we used to work as individual. The size of the program is much bigger than previous class assignment we used to have, and I felt pressure of the duty and responsibilities as a team member. However, we struggled together, pushed and pulled each other, we learned a lot in short time. It was great experience working as a team.
Details
Gather