Collie

Inspiration

The inspiration behind Collie was the issue of overcrowding in large events like concerts and festivals. It's extremely difficult to keep track of the participants even with large scale management teams, which has unfortuntaely led to several deaths in recent years, such as the Itaewon 2022 Halloween tragedy which led to the deaths of over 100 innocent lives. As a South Korean myself with relatives who were affected by this incident, the issue has become even more pressing to me and led me to pursue creating a solution.

What it does

Collie is an app designed to enhance safety and monitor crowd density in large gatherings such as concerts, parties, and festivals. Utilizing proximity technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Ultra-wideband, Collie monitors and gathers real-time data on relative proximities between users' devices within events, which is then run through an algorithm to calculate densities. Potential congestion areas can be located and sent to event organizers, who can then intervene. Collie also works in unorganized settings such as street festivals/parades. In these dynamic environments, users can report events in a community Waze-like system. Once enough users have reported a specific event, Collie will recognize the event as valid and generate a suitable, recognizable title based on the submissions of users analyzed through the ChatGPT language model. Users can explore a dynamic map featuring these events, then "register" for them, adding themselves to the density database for that event. Collie's continuous monitoring finds congested areas, and sends real-time alerts to registered users. Possible crowd rushes and their direction/location are also sent as notifications to the users, as well as advising them of low-density safe areas they can escape to.

Challenges we ran into

As this is my first hackathon and I am a team of one, learning the ropes was quite difficult. I didn't know where to start or what to look for, my only knowledge of hackathons was through the K-drama "Start-Up" 😭 To design my demo UIs, I used Figma which was a challenge. The software is very complicated and unlike any graphic design software I had used in the past, so the learning curve was very steep. I overcame these challenges through various resources such as videos and articles, and was able to come out with a product I'm satisfied with.

Also, the ideation process posed a bit of a challenge. Keeping so many aspects like user-friendliness and technical detail in mind throughout the design process led to countless changes being made, even in the last 5 minutes to submit. Using planning resources and mapping information helped organize the thought process and keep ideas flowing smoothly.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall, I'm proud of the fact that I completed my project. Leading up to the hackathon, I was honestly really nervous as I was solo, this was my first hackathon, and it seemed like everyone else had more experience than I. But as I got further into my project, I realized that being resourceful makes the entire process much easier than expected and began to just focus on my own project and growth. I was able to learn a hackathon's process, how to use Figma, project ideation, UI design, and proximity technology and in the end, I was able to start from virtually no knowledge on hackathons to a final product that I'm personally proud of.

What's next for Collie

In the future, I hope to create a working app for Collie, as its objective truly means a lot to me and I feel that my project can offer a way to mitigate safety risks in crowds.

Built With

• bluetooth
• chatgpt
• figma
• ultra-wideband