Team Hackies - DolFin

Inspiration

The world of financial fraud is vast. With the rising crisis of scams, the best way to mitigate against it would be to bring up the public awareness on how to identify and protect oneself against scams. Hence the birth of "DolFin", an app with specially curated information and knowledge about strategies against fraud. "Fin" being a play on the word "Finance" and the symbol of the dolphin as an animal known for its intelligence. The main draw is the simplicity and user friendliness of the application. This app addresses the problem of having gaps in public awareness when it comes to scams, as well as keep people updated on current scam tactics.

What it does

DolFin has a home page with information about scams, scam prevention and what to do if one has already fallen to financial fraud. It has a Quiz page with a fun, simple exercise to test the user's knowledge. It also has a news page that compiles recent headlines about fraud, allowing the user to be up to date on the latest scam tactics.

How we built it

Our team built it using Jetpack Compose, Kotlin and Android Studio. We used the NewsAPI's developer plan, as well as various tools like Figma and Canva for the design.

Challenges we ran into

It was challenging to use the NewsAPI as the free plan was limited in its uses, in terms of news dates we are allowed to access. To circumvent that, we first tried directly requesting for the JSON using a python script for requests instead. There were also several dependency clashes that we had to work out.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are especially proud of the simple, user-friendly design that caters to people of all ages -- especially the older generation. As they are the most likely to fall to scams, this app uses a design that appeals to them with big fonts, simple buttons and without the frills of unnecessary features (user log in etc.)

What we learned

We learnt the complexity and usefulness of Jetpack Compose's ui components and how to integrate the various dependencies used in android studio.

What's next for DolFin

Originally, we had hoped to be able to create a sort of chat bot that would be able to answer questions about any financial fraud, as well as identify if a certain text or situation could be financial fraud. By integrating such a feature, DolFin can become even more interactive and useful in raising awareness on scams.

Built With

• android-studio
• compose
• jetpack
• json
• kotlin
• python