GAP Tech | Devpost

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What a lesson page would look like

Inspiration

Technology is overwhelming for many people, causing technophobia in some, and it will only get more advanced. As a result, many people will be unable to reap the benefits of technology. In order to bridge the GAP between people and technology, the educational application GAP Tech was created.

What it does

GAP Tech aims to educate the technology-averse and technophobic individuals to achieve a more comprehensive understanding of different technologies and ways to integrate technology into one's life to be more productive and efficient.

How we built it

We built the app in dart and Figma. Initially utilized Flutter's UI toolkit (before the computer crashed. Leveraged Android Studio as an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for the android version of the app. The app's prototype was built using Figma.

Challenges we ran into

Our team's developer's laptop unfortunately did not have the processing capability to run our application in Android Studio. For this reason, we were forced to rely on our slide-deck and Figma prototype to demo the app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Foremost, we are most proud of the completion of our project because we dedicated many hours of research to it, and we were able to see our hard work pay off in the form of a practical real-world project. We were all able to grow from the experience overall, becoming more skilled individuals.

We each divided our work into specific tasks: one person was in charge of research and the pitch-focused UI (a pleasing and informational slide deck), and two people were in charge of develop, one of which was in charge of developing the prototype in Figma, and the other developing the actual app, focusing mainly on the backend.

Additionally, the person in charge of research and pitch-focused UI was able to use chatGPT to help with fact checking, as well as form and structure.

Moreover, one person had a vision for the project and drew a base sketch which helped the person in charge of UX/UI have a clearer idea of where to start from.

We were very proud to have been able to develop app development skills in such little time, and although we were unable to showcase a working app, the UX/UI developer was able to build the Figma prototype which was what we ended up basing most of our showcase on during the pitch cycles. And even though the UI did not look as nice as we had initially hoped it would, it was first prototype which allowed us to visually pitch to judges.

What we learned

Within the project, we learned that technophobia affects a larger population. During the application process of the project, running the emulator challenged the laptop to the point of crashing. We also learned that clear communication is extremely important when working on a team, the importance of having a clearly and simply defined problem statement, solutions, and edge cases, and how important it is to have a specific target audience in mind and create a larger pool through remedying edge cases where the model might break.

What's next for GAP Tech

Revenue/ monetization
Developing the API (Google analytics upper cache) in order for the user not to be forced to make an account until they go through the first exercise and challenge which guides them through the process and completion of making their account.
Using PHP and SQL to build the server side of the app creating permanent illustrations for the app
Adding a feature for additional support - connecting the app to ChatGPT4 to offer additional support to users. This feature was suggested to one team member by a friend from a different project - EduLive - and would add incredible value to the app

Built With

Submitted to

HackPrinceton Spring 2023

Created by

Conducted the research about the app's potential and created the presentation for the project.

Anais Peralta
I would like to start this off by expressing how grateful I am for this experience, and to have been able to work with my two wonderful teammates.

In terms of personal contribution, I did the design implementation in Figma based off of my teammates design and ideas, as well as defined a research strategy that aided in my teammate's research.
Their research in turn were incredibly helpful to me; without this teammate's work, it would have been very difficult for me to develop this prototype.

Something new I learned in Figma during this process was how to make a hovering selector UI functionality and making them into components for reusability - streamlining the process. Before this, I had seldom used the component creation functionality for creating assets. It's an excellent tool that I plan on utlising a lot in future project.

When I first met my teammates during the team-building exercise, what drew me to their project was the fact I actually had a very similar idea.

Where our idea ended up differing was the target audience.
My teammate and team lead, whose idea we based ourselves off of, wanted for the target audience to be anyone with technophobia, while I wanted for the target audience to be primarily focused on a smaller group (boomers + baby boomers) with remedied edge cases enabling the app to be enjoyed by all in need of a way to learn about technology in a less overwhelming environment and method.

My reasoning for wanting to focus the app primarily on the needs of boomers and their parent generation, the traditionalist or silent generation, was twofold: 1) the unique experiences of those generations, 2) i believe a more focused target audience would make it easier to design the app as well as to remedy the edge cases. A little more on this to follow.

1) Individuals part of the Traditionalist Generation were used to the elements that make up most tech systems nowadays being separated. A phone was for phoning/calling people and nothing else, a calculator was the most tech that'd have been utilised to make calculations, a letter -handwritten or perhaps typewritten - was used to send message, and so on. So the fear of technology is largely routed in a fear of the unknown, which we could almost qualify as a fear of dimensionality, if assuming the integration of these different parts were like entering a new dimension, near impossible to conceive of if all one's ever known were so far removed from these new integrations, as explained by Carl Sagan on the topic of the 4th dimension.

In terms of individuals part of the boomer demographic, they were taught to only do things if they were sure they wouldn't make any mistakes, and that the output would be positive. Therefore they do not naturally work by trial and error. They also witnessed gradual and steady yet groundbreaking advancements in technology for 50 years, followed by fast and exponential advancements in the following 20 years, which are still continuing today. Theirs is a fear of failure and a fear of breaking something and a problem occurring.

Both generations are film-oriented (silent black and white films were prevalent for the former, sound-based black and white then color films for the latter), and enjoy to through visual means, as well as learning by copying and with human support. Both generations require support similar to that in the experience of learning to ride a bicycle.

2) These two generations experienced technology similar and different ways, and their relationship to it is different. However, the similarities as well as the differences are close enough that similar needs need to be met.

In terms of edge cases, there would be a few to remedy, but doing so wouldn't require much. One edge case would be in order to truly allow for usability and usefulness to as large a pool of users as possible, certain individuals in order, more techno-focused generations may have radically different types of technophobia.
To bypass certain "hand-holding" functions, processes could be implemented somewhat easily such as "skip to" types of abilities.

Both ideas were valid, but because the team also wanted to find ways to monetise the app, the idea was to sell to as many people as possible, hence a larger pool as target audience.

My largest difficulty was finding a way to cater to multiple generations, each with their own very polarising exposure and fears of technology. It was also that for most of the hackathon, I had a rather different understanding of the problem statement, perhaps because of how similar our initial ideas were and because we all wished to cater to older generations but include anyone with a fear of technology in our user base.
I should have communicated more clearly what my understanding was to make sure that this was indeed the vision the team leader had. The subtle differences in our ideas were quite stark in fact because of the target audience.

What we could have been done differently is a clear visual aid like a tree of the project could have been drawn/defined to make sure we were all on the same page.

Regardless, I learned so much from this experience, and what I perhaps liked the most was seeing the growth in my teammates and I by the end of the experience.

Nour Acogny
Chevaughn Williams

Updates

Chevaughn Williams started this project — Apr 02, 2023 08:29 AM EDT

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