Buddy System | Devpost

Initial screen
When "REPORT EVENT" is clicked
Helper view after chosen
After report type is chosen

Inspiration

I have been in several situations where I was somewhere deserted and found myself being harassed. Because of this I felt that I might be in physical danger but I did not want to contact the authorities on a whim. I have also experienced situations where I was in a crowd and was being harassed and people assumed it was a personal conflict.

I wanted to build a way for people to ask for help from those nearby in order to quickly feel a sense of security.

What it does

Provides a HELP button that allows a user to send requests for assistance to people within 1000 meters (differs based on population and city) of their current location using geofencing. At time of request, notifications are sent out to the users nearby, who can then choose whether or not they would like to help. If and only if they choose to help, they will be directed to the location of the event.

How we built it

Four front end developers used Android Studios to design and create the application which communicates with a web server. The web server was implemented by one back-end programmer using AWS and it connects to the database, which was also implemented by the back-end programmer.

Challenges we ran into

One of the challenges we ran into frequently was the usage of Github and being able to merge our work together without losing work done from one of the branches.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finding an idea that we are all passionate about and being able to create a working prototype of it as we envisioned.

What we learned

How to concurrently work with a group and yield individual results that will come together to form a working project.

What's next for Buddy System

Our next direct step will be to fix security issues and cater usability for all locations, as these are issues we have noticed with our application but could address currently due to time constraints. In the future, we hope for Buddy System to become a built-in application in android devices, as it is a form of security that will help make our communities safer with increase in usage.