TwoHands | Devpost

Inspiration

The members of our group have been to many places across campus, and have all noticed that there are plenty of designated surplus locations that many people do not know of. We frequently visit those surplus piles to see what new items have been added, and we notice that many items are in fantastic condition, in fact, in our demo listing, we have many brand-new items. We have been told that if people do not pick up those items, they would inevitably be sent away as waste. We believe that these objects have high reuse potential, and we may be able to save some waste by simply getting people to know about them.

What it does

The primary feature of this application is a listview of items that can be found in various surplus locations across campus. The user can scroll and browse through the catalog, and if they are interested in an item, they can click on it to obtain more information. They will be given the location of the surplus pile as well as a little bit of information about the item's condition. These objects can only be listed by university professors and employees, as we trust them to correctly leave unwanted items at surplus locations. If we allow everyone to list items, people may end up leaving items anywhere depending on their convenience, which is counterproductive to our goal of reducing waste.

How we built it

We utilized the Java language as well as the AndroidStudio IDE to develop an Android app to display the objects. The objects CardViews are listed inside a GridView on a Scrollview within the home page. Clicking on a card initializes an onClickListener action which brings you to the item's description.

Challenges we ran into

The primary challenge we ran into was understanding AndroidStudio templates and workarounds. There were many times when our approaches would not work due to how we had set up the scenes and XML files, so we spent a lot of time figuring out how to get around those obstacles. There are also issues with the ScrollView not scrolling smoothly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are satisfied with how the product looks after the amount of time we have put in.

What we learned

We learned many interesting tricks about Android Development as well as tips on how to optimize mobile app development code.

What's next for TwoHands

We would like this application to be more well-known to the public so we are able to grow our catalog. The larger our catalog is, the higher chance some of these items can be saved from unnecessary disposal. If we work with the university and professors, we may be able to list more items on the app as well as reach more students and teachers with our goal.