MANU | Devpost

The system shown on the kiosk

Inspiration

From the beginning we wanted to focus on the social aspect of cities in general. Nowadays, people complain that they are overwhelmed by the amount of available information, but on the other hand people that don't have roof over their heads or originate from very poor background frequently lack access to information which can be helpful for them when they need them. Verbal communication with such people has oftentimes shown us, that they lack information about places which can provide help for them. From this personal experience we have assumed, that we are dealing with a real problem which isn't solved right now or is solved poorly.

What it does

Our system comprises of graphical interface which acts as an information guide for our target group as well as administration dashboard for content management used by the city. Graphical guide will be shown on kiosks throughout the city in predetermined locations which have higher probability of occurence of people from the target audience. Dashboard will be in form of a web application. Graphical interface provides important information in a succinct and well arranged form which ensures easy and fast orientation in the interface. Dashboard will be used by the city clerk or other city employee with access permissions. One of the biggest benefits for target group of our idea is the ability to get a job provided through the system and get credibility assessment for completing the job task. This way city can monitor credibility history of people from marginated social areas. They can be recommended by the system to potential third-party employers and can be given chance to get real job opportunity. Implementation of this idea wasn't done due to time shortage and focus on essential parts of our system.

How we built it

Building process comprised of working on the graphical interface, creating backend logic as well as authentication, structuring NoSQL database with APIs and establishing hosting. Interface was built with React.js and Material-UI components. Database creation, authentication and hosting were managed by Firebase. As VCS we have used GitLab, which allowed us to split our team to 2 groups and work parallelly on dashboard and information guide for target group.

Challenges we ran into

Main challenge was to think about the information guide as an interface for kiosk and not for the web. We spend a decent amount of time on considering how to provide simple and easy to understand interface which can also be used by people with low or zero technical knowledge. Forms for creating and editing content, setting up the authentication and providing private route was for some time a daunting task.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have managed to create functional system which can be used with small technical additions and improvements.

What we learned

We have gained major experience in task management, working under time pressure and mainly working as a team. On the technical side we have learned essential principles of React.js and Firebase.

What's next for MANU

Next step for our system would be implementation of credibility history management and integration with third-party employers. Also administrator roles for managing content and improved responsibility for potential future implementation on other platforms.