Path to Winning the HACC

Overview of HMARCamino

HMARCamino developed by HACCamino is an online reporting platform that helps Hawai’i Marine Animal Response (or HMAR) volunteers and staff members in organizing and collecting sighting reports from the general public. Developing this app was a part of participating in the Hawai’i Annual Code Challenge (HACC) where many teams competed to develop an app for a government agency. Hawai’i Marine Animal Response (HMAR) pitched a problem they faced with their animal reporting. Currently, the organization’s only means of collecting information on sightings and/or animals in distress is through a hotline number. However, this system comes with issues including getting calls for reports involving other animals, getting multiple calls for similar sightings, some locations having poor connectivity leading to poor communication between observer and dispatcher, and many more. So our team developed HMARCamino that focuses on making an online platform that will help condense reports made by the general public. We use google maps to help the volunteers find the exact location of these animals/species to get help as soon as possible. This application will also give volunteers a better understanding of what they will be dealing with since we are giving the public the ability to upload photos of the animal and surrounding area. It is secured from the public where admin and volunteers are only able to access the sightings and reports.

HMARCamino won first prize out of all applications in the HACC.

Learn More About Our application

Our source code, live running app and devpost can be found at the following links: HMARCamino Repo HMARCamino Devpost Our application is deployed here: ECOCamino App

Our Method

For the HACC, we used milestones to manage our project. Every three days we would review, close or transfer issues in our Github project that we would assign. We would meet two times (sometimes three) and discuss the things we had finished, need to complete and agree on which issues to assign to each other. We chipped away at the work and finished.

Overview of My Contribution to the Project

I worked on a part admin dashboard, side-bar, UI design, landing and presentations.

Mock-up pages

We made mock-up pages through figma. I made layouts for the admin pages. Other members did other stuff too.

UI Layut

Michael and I met and discussed our UI. We chose specific colors that complemented each other and so it was consistent.

I personally designed a new logo for our app.

The Side Nav Bar

We implemented a side navbar to our app because it was accessible by mobile and web. The side navbar prevents UI deformations. We found with the top navbar it did not lay out nicely. It also would create a gap that looked unattractive to the app. A top navbar looks better if its only a web application, but a side navbar fits more appropriately when it is both. I worked on this with Daphne. Creating a side navbar was harder than we thought, but after time it worked.

Admin Dashboard

I worked on the Admin dashboard with Jerome. We both collaborated on the layout. We created a dashboard where the admin will be directed to when they log in. The dashboard has a list of all reports:

They will also be able to see infographics of the cases based on subtype and location:

Presentations

Reflection

Participating in HACC was different from Meteor Hackathon. Since we had more time than 5 days, it was easier to spread the work out over time. I found that HACC was more professional than I anticipated. There were strict rules and guidelines to follow. It was also easy to procrastinate, but that is where a great team comes into play. Our team works together and complements each other. We are all very goal oriented people and have strengths in different areas. We were able to develop this app in a timely manner on top of many other classes. Managing my time was an area I struggled in because of my five other classes. I am grateful our team has each other’s back and could help each other out. Imposter syndrome is one of my favorite places for my computer science skills to go. Winning the HACC gives me more confidence in my ability to create these types of things. Some things I have learned that I would like to continue to work on is creating collections and strengthening my engineering side of software.