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A mobile application aimed at reducing costs and time within the logistics industry by avoiding wildlife-related accidents.
View on DevPostWhile getting our UX Design and Software Engineering diplomas at BrainStation's Bootcamp, a group of us decided we wanted to work together and compete in Shellhacks, Florida's Largest Hackathon. This 36-hour hackathon took place only a week after our bootcamp ended.
Sept. 15, 7:00 PM | T-MINUS 4 HOURS TO START
When we got to FIU, we realized the event was massive, with 1500 people attending. A total of 796 of hackers competed across more than 20 categories to build solutions based on different problem spaces from companies like Google, CapitalONE, Waymo, Vanguard, State Farm, and more.
SEPT 15, 11:00 PM | HOUR 0
By 11:00 PM, prompts were released and we had to choose which challenge to tackle and form a team of four people to create a solution. Our idea was to divide our teams into one UX Designer and two or more engineers per team, then collaborate across-teams to bounce off ideas.
SEPT 16, 1:00 AM | HOUR 2
Within a few hours, we had built our team and decided which prompt we would work on. We chose Waymo because of our shared interested in their mission of making it safe and easy for people and things to get where they’re going. The challenge was to create a hack that improves transportation using the Google Maps Platform and APIs.
SEPT 16, 2:00 AM | HOUR 3
Our strategy was to create a simple and user friendly product. We narrowed the scope and selected a specific demographic in order to limit unnecessary features.
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Focused:
We focused in only one prompt and made an effort to create the best possible solution for it.
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User-Centric:
Throughout our entire process, we kept the target user the core of our design decisions.
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Simple:
The simpler, be better. We knew that too many features would overwhelm the user.
SEPT 16, 4:00 AM | HOUR 5
We spent hours doing research to validate our problem space and found the shocking economic impact of wildlife-related accidents. Another challenge was to find databases with information on this kinds of incidents or roadkill accidents.
We also created a How Might We Question: How might we help logistics providers save time, money, and keep their drivers safe by providing a way for commercial vehicle drivers to prevent roadkill-related accidents?
SEPT 16, 6:00 AM | HOUR 7
We sketched a solution and discussed our ideas as a team, and while the software engineers took a well deserved nap, I focused on creating a cohesive, low-fidelity task-flow on Figma so we could test it out before injecting color or doing any type of branding. By the time they woke up, we were ready to build!
SEPT 16, 8:00 AM | HOUR 9
We tested the functionality of the application with the Figma prototype and the software engineers were ready to start building on React using Supabass, JavaScript, and four different Google APIs to give users the most accurate data.
SEPT 16, 1:00 PM | HOUR 14
As the UX Designer on the team, I got to working on branding, colors, and logo creation while the software team was working their magic on the app's functionality.
We created a logo that had the same colors and over-all style as Waymo's logo.
We called it: ClearPath
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SEPT 16, 3:00 PM | HOUR 16
To keep branding consistent, we chose different hues of the Waymo's logo colors for the app's interface.
SEPT 16, 11:00 PM | HOUR 24
One of the challenges we faced was creating an algorithm that would go through the data set we had on roadkill-related incidents and accurately cross-reference it to the geolocation of the driver. We are most proud of completing the cross-reference function, which has hundreds of lines of code, in such a short period of time (or so I was told, I legitimately think these guys might be wizards because this is very, very complex).
SEPT 17, 7:00 AM | HOUR 32
A lot of coffee & Redbull later, we were finalizing the app and creating our pitch deck to present to the judges. No job was too small and no one hesitated to jump in where they were needed.
SEPT 10:00 AM | HOUR 35
This amazing team of engineers created an app that not only had complex functionality but also looked exactly like the design they were handed.
SEPT 17, 4:00 PM | 5 HOURS AFTER JUDGING
Our hard work paid off and we won 1st place for the Waymo challenge!
The experience of competing for 36 hours straight and coming up with a good product was extremely rewarding. We got to gauge each other's strengths and weaknesses while collaborating. Needless to say, this is not the last time this team is going to be working together.
Research integration with Route Optimization apps and Self Driving Vehicle Software.
Improving Algorithms based on other metrics.
Creating ClearPath as a plugging for maps used by commercial truck drivers.
Fancy seeing you all the way down here! I'd like to sincerely thank you for taking the time to look at my work. Feel free to connect with me via Linkedin or email with any questions, suggestion, or comments.
