BlueJacket | Devpost

Inspiration

We all have the mornings where not ten minutes of your awake mind have passed and the day slowly dawns upon you. Meetings, schedules, physical endurance, and mental exhaustion all come rushing forward like a raging sea. Five more minutes...and then you take the first pivotal step—the dress for today.

BlueJacket helps you make that first step by helping you select the best fashions of tomorrow. Take in the torrent of magazines, social media, and interests from the global web and envelope it to your personal self by searching similar items in the web to you shelf or selecting from other BlueJacket users portfolios.

What it does

BlueJacket works by suggesting fashion styles based on user input to show either similar outfits on the web or by other BlueJacket users. The aim is to provide worthwhile fashion advice to people within a socially conversive environment that is local, meaningful, and a valuable experience.

How we built it

We used ExpressJS for the fundamental templating of the web app. We all learned it here at HackFSU in the workshop for it, and it provided a wonderful experience for both veterans and beginners to the Node Javascript runtime.

Once templating the beginning web app was completed, the html for each page was refactored and made to our standards. We also used the Instagram developer API to gather information and pictures using Instafeed.js.

We also created assets for the web app using Adobe Illustrator and used Coolors for our color palette.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges was the integration of Instagram's API, as it had recently changed to offer new features and security. Now, Instagram's API works to sandbox applications, so we can no longer get public content, but access to sandbox users. (Correct us if we're wrong :) )

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating the logo for Blue Jacket was an enlightening experience, and it looks very professional thanks to the Design Workshop at HackFSU.

Using ExpressJS for the first time was truly a gift. We didn't know it was such a powerful tool in creating APIs and hope to experiment with it in the future.

Building a very nice looking website brought morale up in those wee early hours in the morning. It was really amazing to see the frontend come to life.

What we learned

Aside from ExpressJS, html, css, and designing for all of us, we learned the dynamics of building a web app and the possibilities for expansion with new technologies.

What's next for BlueJacket

We'd like to implement a lot more function to our frontend. Creating a database for the web search function to find fashions would be the best thing to do and integrating Instagram's API with it.

Separating the user submitted base and creating a backend for the user base will also be part of BlueJacket's future. We certainly want to build an app too, probably using the Ionic Framework that we were introduced to here at HackFSU.

Until then, check out the Github and the website! Thanks!

P.S. Why the name BlueJacket? One of the group members was suggesting the idea for the app when she said the word "blue jacket". One of the other group members thought it was a good name and liked it a lot...almost too much.