eWait | Devpost

Inspiration

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we noticed that many are hesitant to go to normal health-check up appointments. Often the reason for this is due to the fear of running into another patient. This problem scales within many other industries such as salons, theme parks, restaurants and much more. With our app idea, we have a virtual waiting room that will allow people to optimize their time while social-distancing and quickly be in and out of places they need to be! Additionally, with the pandemic there has been an increase in mental health struggles. Although waiting can be boring, our app offers a game room where users can experience positive mental simulations!

What it does

The goal of this product is to help companies adhere to social distancing guidelines in the simplest way possible. Companies are equipped with the ability to create, edit, and delete waiting rooms. They can also assign incoming customers to a specific virtual waiting room where they can be notified of their place in the line. Thus, companies can control the load of people in their physical locations without lines forming outside or overcrowding inside. As a customer, you are able to enter waiting rooms through two channels. Firstly, you can enter a specific code given to you by a company to enter the waiting room. This would be more beneficial for sensitive meetings such as a doctors appointment or a trip to the bank. The customer may also search for waiting rooms around them and choose to join them without a code. This could be useful in places like shopping malls as people browse through the stores and restaurants. We worked hard to ensure that the workflow is extremely simple and time efficient so that it is usable by any business irrespective of the amount of technical knowledge they have.

How we built it

To build the mobile app that was Android and iOS friendly, we used a cross platform called flutter which was written in dart using state management architecture and firebase’s realtime database. All data is handled through a snapshot listener to offer the best real time experience and we also have notification endpoints in the cloud. We connect the enablers such as hospitals and businesses who need this service using a web app which tracks all of their waiting rooms through a realtime database as well.

Our product is divided into two parts. A mobile application for consumers and a web application for companies. The mobile application was developed using Swift and Flutter in order to build it for different platforms. Google firebase was also used to store user data and help develop our app in a small period of time. We also implemented the google Maps API in order to obtain easy location information for businesses and customers. Therefore, customers could check into waiting rooms near them. The web application was built through React JS. Through it, companies could add, edit and delete waiting rooms and assign customers to waiting rooms. This web application was then connected to our mobile application

Challenges we ran into

We came into this hackathon with a team of 3 beginners and one veteran. We all had different skills that we were able to contribute to the team. The first major challenge we faced was coming up with an idea that we could all contribute to. After a lot of brainstorming, we came up with the idea of minimizing person-to-person contact in medical waiting rooms. This inkling of an idea then eventually grew into the application we have now which is applicable to all businesses. A lot of our members picked up new skills from each other such as React and back-end design. It was definitely challenging to learn these concepts in such a short amount of time however, the end was rewarding. Another challenge we faced was that one of our members was located in Dubai which made coordinating meetings through the time zones difficult.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

With the limited time given, we are proud that we were able to implement the use of several languages and softwares to build a connecting mobile and web app aspect to eWait. With three beginners on the team, it was an exciting experience to pool our individual experiences and create a project to solve issues that we all felt passionate about. In addition, we are proud of the design and logo that is appealing yet clean and user-friendly.

What we learned

Since this was the first HackAThon for a majority of our team, we learned a lot about rapid prototyping, ideation, and implementation. We were all pushed out of our comfort zone as we took on the task of programming in languages we hadn’t learned or implementing APIs we hadn’t used before the competition. The most valuable thing we learned was that the best way to get something done is to go ahead and do it. The time constraints forced us out of complacency as we quickly parsed through documentation and tutorials trying to build our product. Not only did we gain a lot of technical knowledge, we also learned about communicating with other team members and the importance of prioritizing your work in high pressure situations.

What's next for e-Wait

With the COVID-19 pandemic, we believe this virtual waiting room is ideal for our current situation to alleviate physical barriers of going places while optimizing social-distancing in public areas. Since this issue is present in almost all industries, we plan to reach out to companies to find potential partners that could help us implement our app into real life. For instance, we cannot stop crowded places such as theme parks from being open, but we can offer a location based solution like our virtual waiting rooms. That is one example of countless possibilities. We plan to continue developing this app to a level where it can be used on a daily basis, whether you or going to get a haircut or go to a theme park. In addition, we plan to grow our features such as the Game Room by including other stress-relief activities that our users can take advantage of to enjoy their waiting time.