Elgoog

An unconventional hack with unexpected results and an easter egg

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Inspiration

Technology reflects societal values — sometimes in problematic ways.

Search results, for example, can risk re-entrenching biases. That is, if someone who is not a white man searches for “computer scientist” and sees a page of white men, they may feel that only white men can be computer scientists, further perpetuating lack of representation in the industry.

With an estimated 5.6 billion searches happening daily on Google, the most popular search engine with over 70% of the search market share (1), we decided to create our own version of Google called Elgoog. Elgoog helps break stereotypes and challenges our view of the world by not conforming to society's expectations.

What it does

Elgoog is a search engine that offers unconventional results to help broaden our perspective and identify what might be defaulted for us by society. We also have an easter egg if you click on the logo in celebration of International Day of Persons with Disabilities. Recognizing that 1.) the LGBTQ+ community and the disability community intersect in significant ways; 2.) non-normative sexuality has long been part of the social fabric of Seattle (since the late 19th century!); and 3.) members experienced personal pain point of not finding venues that are wheelchair-accessible, we created a resource guide you can use to find in Seattle pride events, venues with accessibility and non-gender conforming restrooms, and more.

First, take a look at our unconventional search results for some common occupations:

  • computer scientist
  • doctor
  • nurse
  • lawyer
  • ballerina
  • model

For example, if we search for computer scientist, we’ll see results for African American and Black female pioneers in computing. If we wanted to view the dominant narrative in existing search engines (i.e. the results you’d see if you just Googled it), we’d have to intentionally add Caucasian to the search phrase while using our search engine. Just as you’d have to be intentional about specifying African American computer scientist if you wanted to see those results in Google, with Elgoog, you’d have to be intentional about viewing the dominant narrative in existing search engines.

Some other fun phrases to elgoog (yes! Elgoog can be a verb) that makes the virtual search a more inclusive space include:

  • who's who in tech - find LGBTQ leaders and role models we can identify with
  • hiring tech companies - If we’re a veteran looking for a job, we can more readily find companies that welcome our background
  • tiktok - we see results of older adults both using and going viral on Tiktok, reinforcing that we’re not too old for new technology
  • recommended reads - provide books with characters with disability

How we built it

The search engine was built using React, Custom Search JSON API, and Material UI for the icons, and was deployed on Microsoft Azure static apps.

Challenges we ran into

React Router recently released a new version, so we were learning through a tutorial that had used the old version and thus we had to troubleshoot and review documentation for anything that was deprecated.

We also expended an absurd number of hours working to deploy the app on Azure, but it also made for a lot of practice and a deeper understanding CI/CD, building clean pipelines, ensuring we have correct permissions, the importance of opening VSCode in our project’s root directory, understanding more how Git works, understanding environment variables and secrets in Github, and debugging from results and log files.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re also a motley team with one high schooler, one community college student, and two working professionals with a liberal arts background looking to become a front end developer via bootcamp and product manager as a first generation college student.

Additionally, with one of our team members being Deaf, we adapted and figured out ways to communicate, connect with, collaborate with, support and celebrate (laughing together often!) each other.

What we learned

We learned to deploy our first static app with API keys to keep secrets on Azure, a whole lot about CI/CD, and how non-normative sexuality has been part of the social fabric of Seattle since late 19th century.

We also learned a lot about arrays and working with them and looping through them to output results, and we learned about building our own database.

What's next for Elgoog

  • Adding ways to personalize results that reflect what you want to see more of
  • Exploring more ways to integrate with cloud offerings in Azure
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