Bird Watcher

Home Screen
Drop Down Menu
Info Pages
National Park Page

Inspiration

Coming into this hackathon, we wanted to incorporate both of our interests in coding and in environmentalism into one cohesive app. We drew inspiration from the various species of birds found near the UCSB lagoon, as we were inspired to learn more about the unique chaparral ecosystem. Thus this app was hatched from our interest of educating not only others, but also ourselves.

How I built it

We built this iOS app using XCode and tested it on our own iPhones.

Challenges I ran into

The majority of the challenges we faced were not knowing certain functions that could be called/used. However, with a little bit of research, we were able to figure out a solution. One of the issues we encountered was formatting a pop-up box to appear in a certain area. After being assisted by the Smartcar representatives, we were able to work together and solve the problem!

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Being the first major coding competition that both of us attending, we are very proud to have been able to create a functioning app that encompasses both our interests. Through constant motivation from our peers and mentors, along with attending multiple workshops, we gained important skills that we hope to use one day in future hackathons.

What I learned

Brianna: Coming with no background in coding, I learned how exciting and useful coding truly is. I am looking forward to learning more about Python and Xcode from my partner Nina and hopefully create more projects with that knowledge! Nina: From this experience, I was able to explore new concepts that allowed for a better user experience, such as drop-down lists, and animations. Furthermore, I realized that hackathons are not all intimidating and that the people here just want us to succeed! It was extremely eye-opening to witness empowered womxn empowering womxn!

What's next for Bird Watcher

In the future, we hope to expand the list of National Parks that our app covers, as well as the variety of bird species. We want to incorporate some kind of data fetching element as well as GPS location tracking in order to increase the functionality of our app. We are just getting started with this app and hope to keep pecking at it!