We wanted to address the issues of loneliness and lack of civic involvement present within our community. How can people possibly be more engaged with their surroundings and neighbours if they don't have a reliable means of communicating and helping each other? There are hundreds of volunteers required every day to keep our cities safe, clean, and sustainable for its citizens, motivating us to create a hub for people to lend a helping hand.
After a quick note explaining the basic functionality of our web app, users are greeted to a 3D map layout where they can enter an address and scout nearby volunteer opportunities. Once they enter their desired location and radius for consideration, the map hones in on that spot and identifies local opportunities that the user can checkout! Each in-person event will have its title, description, organization, and time commitment visible upon click, as well as the hyperlink to apply.
On top of the map viewer, there's also a matching protocol to opportunities that fall within their set radius. Users can swipe left to decline an event, or right to express interest (sort of like a certain other matchmaking app...) without having to manually scroll the map by hand.
There isn't a requirement to make an account, but if users choose to, they can save opportunities, make friends with fellow volunteers, and who's also participating in a selected volunteering event.
We divvied the workload by frontend and backend functionality, so that we could focus on pure aesthetics and proper functionality as separate--but still equally important--tasks. This meant having to coordinate separate branches for our 2D/3D map viewer, account management, populating the contents of said map, and the swipe viewer that displays activities within a certain radius.
Implementing the backend took a significant amount of time and effort to perform, since it has to account for fairly complicated details for each users and coordinate them with others.
- Implementing a fully functioning GPS-based volunteering app that you can use! Right now!
- Visually pleasing renderings for buildings, roadways, and other plots of land
- Looking up addresses orientates the map for where you're trying to look
- The swipe viewer correctly adds new opportunities to the user's favourites list
In a mad dash to implement our idea, we learned a lot about API protocols, rendering in browsers, intrinsically motivated UX, as well as how to combine resources and practices learned to make something really special.
Some more tweaking with the backend would allow for people to apply for volunteer opportunities along with their friends. It would also be great to modify the map viewer to have less pop in and visual blemishes, making the UX much more sleek and appealing than in its current state.