Inspiration
One of our members had (yet again) forgotten to bring her toothbrush to the Hackathon. Out of a fit of rage, an idea was formed to help other hackers who may have forgotten an important item, but had realized only when it became too late. We wanted to create a Google Action that can be used by anybody going to a hackathon! So you can focus on hacking, instead of worrying about packing.
What it does
HackPack is a Hackathon 'manager' aimed towards anybody! It will load up a series of upcoming Hackathons in case you were interested and it helps you pack your stuff for a hackathon that you're going to. If it's outside of the country, HackPack will be sure to remind you to take your passport with you, and through external API calls, it will also give you the current temperature and recommend you on how to dress for the trip. We want HackPack to be doing the thinking for you, so the only headaches you get are from the bugs, not from you missing your laptop charger.
How we built it
We built it with DialogueFlow that was part of the Google Actions SDK.
Challenges we ran into
External API calls were a bit hard to configure and correctly trigger due to the intents and app.ask() always warranting for user input before it can continue. We got around them by reading documentation and building one big string to print out rather than have multiple tiny messages that would require the user to be dragged through.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
It works and we would use it!
What we learned
We learned about DialogueFlow and how cold it gets in classrooms overnight.
What's next for HackPack
A more user-specific experience by storing data that would improve the user experience. If someone just came home from a hackathon, a nice "how did the hackathon go?" could lead to storing the hackathon idea and perhaps would allow Google Actions to recommend something related that the user could try during their next hackathon
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