door2destination

All the memories. None of the stress.

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Inspiration

Flying has become an integral part of our modern world. Many people couldn't imagine life without it. Despite this, tens of millions of people each year associate travel, especially flights, with fear, uncertainty, and anxiety.

  • How do I secure a ride to the airport?
  • What can I bring that meets TSA standards?
  • Where do I drop off my bag, and how do I pick it up?
  • How can I secure a hotel that matches my travel itinerary?

We wanted to change this to make travel by plane a simple, seamless process.

What it does

door2destination is our solution to this problem. It augments the American Airlines app, offering customers a one-stop solution for all their travel needs. From an integrated Uber rideshare suite to baggage tracking and hotel bundling, door2destination makes traveling a seamless experience.

Features

  • Seamless Authentication: Email, Phone, or Google. Tap once, and you're authenticated.

  • Integrated Uber Rideshare Suite: Book rides to the airport directly from the app and get suggestions tailored to you and your specific flight information.

  • Automatic TSA Baggage Scanner: Open your phone, scan your bag, and get results and peace of mind in seconds.

  • TSA Checklist: No more last-minute packing concerns. No more anxiety. Check once and start your trip in style.

  • Automatic Flight Integration: Simply enter your flight details, and the app will populate your airport, baggage, and travel details in seconds.

  • Airport Navigation: Disruption-proof airport navigation with built-in voice features to meet accessibility standards alongside language translations, and assistive page navigation for screen readers. Rich map features compatible with both Android and iOS.

  • Push Notifications: Never worry about staring at those big flight information display screens again. Get notified of gate changes and baggage updates right on your phone.

  • Zen Mode: Late for your flight? Get your zen on and see step-by-step instructions on what to do next.

  • Built-In Baggage Tracking: Scan your bags, enter your flight details, and sit back. Your baggage details are automatically populated and tracked as you travel.

  • Personalized Hotel Bundling: See hotel options at your destination tailored to you directly in the app.

How we built it

Mobile App Built with React Native to allow for a sleek, cross-platform mobile experience on both iOS and Android.

Backend Powered by a FastAPI server to handle geocoding and API logic such as rideshare and hotel price estimation.

API Calls and Authentication We used a variety of APIs, including:

  • American Airlines Flight Engine API for flight data
  • Hotel API for hotel information
  • Uber Products API for our rideshare suite
  • Eleven Labs API for voice features
  • Clerk for effortless authentication across email, phone, and Google

Mapping and Navigation Utilized React Native Maps combined with the Overpass API (OpenStreetMap) for detailed indoor airport mapping and point-of-interest data. This is what allowed us to offer disruption-proof airport navigation with features such as search and voice.

Local Storage Leveraged AsyncStorage to allow for caching/state management and features such as persistent user preferences and travel checklists locally on the mobile device.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into countless challenges when building door2destination, especially considering the ambitious scope of the project and the tight deadline.

Expo Go Mobile Simulator Issues

As it was our first time with mobile development, we had a steep learning curve implementing React-Native, a mobile-friendly language we had to learn as we coded. Configuring the package dependencies for Expo Go to run initially took hours to implement on both Linux and Windows OS. Though we nearly abandoned the idea due to wasted time, we stayed persistent with the documentation and eventually got it working.

Uber Rideshare Suite Integration

Dealing with the Uber Product API proved more challenging, requiring the efforts of multiple team members for nearly 4 hours before we achieved an implementation we were satisfied with. Generating unique access tokens and selecting the correct data was much more difficult than expected.

API Rate Limits

Pulling hotel data was severely constrained by the rate limits of the API we chose, making testing and debugging much more challenging. It required a lot of creativity, because we couldn't simply run the API 10 times to see what it returned. However, we stuck with the vision of guiding the user from door2destination and got it working.

Team Coordination and Merge Conflicts

Working on these many features across a new medium may have been the most difficult aspect of the project. We had team members across various situations — Windows and Linux, in person and virtual, working across different features, etc. We experienced several issues with dependencies, configurations, OS differences, and merge conflicts. However, this simply required us to take our communication and teamwork to the next level, and I'm proud of the resilience we showed, even when we were tired.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're extremely proud of the scope of features that we managed to introduce in just 24 hours. Especially given that we decided to take the risk with mobile development, our team is proud that we never gave up on the vision and continued to seek that "door2destination" seamless travel experience.

Integrating features such as:

  • Automatic baggage scanning
  • Uber rideshare booking
  • Hotel bundling

It proved difficult, but we managed to pull it off in the end.

Additionally, we are very satisfied with our UI and user experience. We feel we were able to build an aesthetic app with rich features in just 24 hours, and managed to add various accessibility features, such as voice commands.

All in all, pivoting to mobile was challenging but proved necessary for our vision. We're all extremely happy with how it turned out and proud of how we supported each other throughout the process.

What we learned

This may have been the most any of us have learned in 24 hours. Integrating features such as voice recognition, automatic TSA bag scanning, integrated rideshare and hotel services, and maps — in addition to being on mobile and making all these features compatible across iOS and Android — was a technical whirlwind.

However, I think what we learned most as a team was the importance of essentialism and brutal prioritization. We had so many features that it wasn't feasible to do them all at once. We had to be extremely clear about our biggest bottleneck and focus all our attention there. The focus and improved communication skills we gained are what truly allowed us to transfer our skills to a new medium like mobile and create such a feature-rich application.

What's next for door2destination

We're truly excited for the future, especially because we have so many features we feel can make an impact.

Partner with American Airlines Most of all, we would love to partner with American Airlines to improve the quality of the data and the service we can provide to customers. We are very happy with our user experience, but would love to continue forging official partnerships and working with the highest-quality data possible for rideshares, hotels, and baggage. This would take our app to the next level and make the customer's traveling experience truly unforgettable.

Launch on App Stores Finally, because we already have a mobile implementation that works across Android and iOS, we would love to bring our app to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. This would expand our impact, allowing us to garner feedback from users and serve more customers than ever, so that they can go from door2destination, free of worry.

Figma Make Project: https://www.figma.com/make/n6wyf211RbQb4MqVmnkjv5/Mobile-App-Wireframe?p=f&fullscreen=1

Figma Screen Recording: https://www.loom.com/share/7fca9016852f4a64bf391a4b9e2f8593

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