Our group has incorporated two themes proposed in ElleHacks 2021 into our project:
- RBC Sponsored Challenge - Rewarding the Environment
- Climate Change and Sustainability
Footprint is an extension of the current RBC rewards app that provides lessons and learning opportunities for the user to learn about the environment and sustainable practices they can implement in their own daily lives. RBC Footprint slowly creates a conscious consumer by giving them incentives to continue learning about how to make the world a better place one sustainable practice at a time.
Since this project is an extension of an existing application, a login page is not required. However, if RBC Footprint becomes its own application, we would aim for it to look like this. With a reminder that Earth is our beautiful planet and that we are the ones who will make a difference!
The activity tab is what we have focused on. In the existing RBC Rewards application, there is a progress bar to keep track of our recent rewards. We have decided to add two buttons, "DAILY" and "POINTS". "DAILY" is a daily lesson that can be completed for extra points. This will encourage users to learn about different climate change and sustainability everyday, and they're rewarded for it! As for the "POINTS" section, see below for details; this is the main part of the extension.
As a new user, an onboarding prompt will explain the goal of this Footprint extension. RBC Leo is also featured!
Everyday, the tips page will be filled with new tips and tricks to reduce waste and encourage conservation.
This activity page is filled with categories where users can select their area of interest and how they can help protect the Earth in their own way. There are topics such as recycling, fast fashion, and renewable energy. Once they have chosen their preferred topic, there will be articles they can read (not implemented) and also go through a short quiz. Completing a quiz succcessfully guarantees more rewards! These quizzes are optional, so the user just wants to read articles, that is also learning!
As an example, we have a quiz about fast fashion. Fast fashion is trendy and inexpensive clothing that are mass-produced at a low cost. Because of all these points, there's an increase in overproduction and overconsumption, which does not help our ecological footprint. This is why we have a category about fast fashion. Please see the questions below and how our quiz system works!
We considered using blue and yellow for our incorrect and correct answers for design purposes and to also represent RBC more. Also, we wanted to account for people with colourblindness. After a mini debate, we decided to stick with green and red colours because they are usually associated with right and wrong answers. Since we are a learning extension, it makes sense to go with this colour scheme. We have also put symbols to indicate between right and wrong answers for those who have colourblindness.
This quiz contains 3 questions and each question is unique. With these facts and learning experiences, we hope that users feel encouraged to develop good habits in keeping our Earth clean.
We were given the opportunity to present our presentation to the RBC Sponsors in the third round of evaluations! It was a shocking moment for us to all find out we were invited! We were all excited to the point where we got very nervous but thankfully, we had a few minutes to cool down and reset our minds for the presentation. Our team took a lot of time to practice for the YouTube video and this really helped our presentation flow as smoothly as possible. Saakshi also did a great job answering the two of our Sponsor's questions. After that was done, we waited until the Closing Ceremony to hear the results.
Little did we know... our hard work has paid off! We were selected as the winners of the RBC Challenge!! What exciting news!! Other teams had great ideas and presentations as well but we had the edge in the end. All of us are very grateful for working through this challenge. As with most teams I assume, we stayed up and designed and coded away until time was up.
So once again, thank you to the RBC Sponsors for giving us a chance and believing in our idea. We are very excited to attend their exclusive virtual RBC event!
Here, I will be talking about my experience (Yukie's experience) with this project and my awesome teammates! This section is mostly for me to reflect on and remember my own experiences with this event.
Day 1:
- We met up on Discord and introduced ourselves before planning out an idea.
- A little bit about our team... Bonnie is studying Interactive Arts and Technology while doing a minor in Business. Saakshi has an Accounting degree and just finished General Assembly's UXDI bootcamp. As for Sarah and I, we are both studying Computer Science. So our team basically consisted of two Backend Developers and two Frontend Developers with experience in Business.
- Together, we all went through the Ellehacks themes and the one that interested us the most was RBC's challenge: How can RBC rewards programs better help consumers make environmental decisions?
- From there, we knew we wanted to make an educational app where users can learn valuable information about sustainability and climate change. We have also considered an educational gaming app but the idea where we create an extension to the existing RBC Rewards application was chosen.
- It took us a few hours to finalize our idea because we all wanted to research a few things. Why would our extension matter? Who is our targetted demographic? What software and language should we use?
- Why would our extension matter? Well, our users are assumed to be members of the Rewards programs so that they can earn extra rewards. Another motivation for these users to use this extension is to learn how they can help sustain the Earth and reduce waste. Both of these main motivations can also attract new consumers to the RBC Rewards program. It is a win-win for both sides!
- Who is our targetted demographic? Between young adults and seniors, we decided to target young adults. According to our studies, 89% of young adults believe that young people can make a difference regarding climate change. On the other hand, only 9% of young adults are confident that the world will act quickly enough to address what is happening to our planet, source. There were other supporting facts that we have considered as well.
- What software and language should we use? The style of our extension we were aiming for was similar to that of Headspace. They have a very pleasant and clean design, so we researched what was needed to make our design of that aesthetic. Apparently, they used React but Sarah and I don't have any experience with React. Another consideration was using Android Studio. I have used it previously but Sarah did not. We compared the two approaches. Although we would very much like to try React, we were afraid the set up would take too long and we wanted to avoid compatibility problems. From my previous experience, working on different machines online caused a lot of merge and problems within our settings after pulling from each other's repositories, even if we pushed with the same settings. Therefore, I wanted to avoid that and Sarah agreed, so we used Android Studio. The download was very simple and we could use default settings. We were both familiar with Java but we stuck with Kotlin because we could at least learn a new language. I was glad that I got some more experience with Kotlin because it seemed like a shortcut way of programming in Java. For example, no semi-colons were required and writing new objects were easier in Kotlin than in Java. These subtle differences allowed us to focus on debugging the layouts instead of the code, although there was not much to debug.
- We also went to a RBC workshop/career fair in between our research time. It was nice meeting new people and learning more about RBC as a whole.
- After all these points were taken into consideration, we finalized our idea and submitted it. My members took a nap after doing tons of research but I started on the implementation right away because from a previous Hackathon (BC Hacks), I know a lot of time is required to implement a working prototype.
Day 2:
- Nothing new really happened here. We all worked hard on our designated roles. Bonnie and Saakshi kept redesigning and improving our prototypes. Sarah and I kept working on the implementation.
- I would say we were very efficient and if a problem or concern came up, we would discuss it right away with each other.
- The hard part about the ongoing changes with the prototype was that me and Sarah would have to do subtle changes here and there. Sometimes, it just seemed like we should have waited for the prototype to be finished before implementing some things but at the same time, we would take even longer to start the prototype. For some of the things the designers asked, we couldn't implement because we have already implemented it or it took too long to implement so we just stuck with the simpler solution. If we had more time, then those changes would be made on our part.
- Because we were using Kotlin, we did more frontend development than backend development because the most important part of this extension was to make it look nice. Other than linking the layouts with buttons and other basic features with code, the dynamic aspect was not quite there. Dynamic aspects like searching up different articles and quizzes. So, we just had to make do with buttons. With only limited time to make this extension, I think it was fair. There were many things we wanted to accomplish but we had our hands full.
Day 3:
- On the last day, the extension implementation was not complete yet but the proposed prototyped was finally completed. Therefore, I was working myself to quickly finish up the implementation while Sarah worked with Bonnie and Saakshi to prepare the presentation video.
- We submitted everything on time which includes the GitHub and YouTube links.
- Now, we just waited to see if we would be a final contestant in the RBC Challenge.
- After a few hours of waiting, we accepted that our idea was not good enough because we didn't get an invitation to the second round of judging. However, we were still happy with what we accomplished. I was especially proud of what I contributed to the team, which was finishing up a working prototype. It may not look extremely polished as our proposed prototype, but if we had more time, I'm sure we would be able to design it like that.
- We all chatted for a bit and said we were going to sleep but we all got an email saying that we invited to the final round of judging!! We were all so shocked!! In short, we presented our idea to the RBC Sponsors and we won their challenge! I have more information about this in the section above: Special thanks to the RBC Sponsors!
- This hackathon was an amazing experience and it was even more memorable that we won! This was a great start to the year and I'm looking forward to more opportunities at other hackathons in the future.
- Thanks Ellehacks and RBC for this awesome oppotunity!