Inspiration
We like walking at night, but we don't like getting mugged. 💅🤷♀️We can't program personal bodyguards (yet) so preventative measures are our best bet! Accessibility and intuitiveness are 🔑in our idea.
What it does
HelpIs allows users to contact services when they feel unsafe. 📱Location trackers integrate tech into emergency services, which tend to lag behind corporations in terms of tech advancements. 🚀🚔🚓
How we built it
We heavily relied on the use of APIs from Twilio and MapBox to create our project. 💪Specifically, we employed Twilio Programmable Voice for calling 🗣️🗣️, Mapbox GL JS for map display and geolocation 🗺️🗺️, and Mapbox Directions API for route finding and travel time prediction 📍📍. The web app itself is built with VanillaJS (:p), HTML, and CSS. 🙆
Challenges we ran into
Our original design centered on mobile connectivity through a phone app and a wider range of extendable features. Unfortunately, one of our teammates couldn't make it as scheduled 💔, and we had to make some trade-offs 💀💀. Eventually, we pulled through and are thrilled to exceed many goals we set for ourselves at the start of the hack! 💥🔥💯
🚩🚩🚩Also, Alison thought the name was HelpIs (as in like Help is coming!) but Alex (who came up with the name) assumed she could tell it was Helpls (like Help + pls = Helpls). 🐒He even wrote about it in the footnotes of his mockup. You can go read it. Embarrassing... 🚩🚩🚩
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are so proud of the concept behind HelpIs that we decided to make our first ever pitch! ⚾
Thanks Alex for redoing it like four times! 💔😅
What we learned
Differentiating our program from existing services is important in product ideation! 🤑
Also, putting emojis into our about page is super funny 🦗🦟🦗🦟🦗🦟🦗🦟
What's next for HelpIs
We want to make it mobile! There are a few more features that we had planned for the mobile version. Specifically, we were looking to use speech-to-text and custom "code words" to let a user contact authorities without alerting those around them, inspired by the famous 911 call disguised as pizza order! 🤩🤩🤩
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