She Zone

Inspiration

In designing She Zone, we drew inspiration from Saturn, the planet famous for its unique rings. Just as Saturn has its own zone, our app aims to create a similar space for women. We incorporated warm, earthy browns to evoke a sense of feminine energy. The brown tones in our design symbolize grounding, strength, and resilience—values we want every woman to embrace while using the app.

What it does

She Zone is a platform that enables women to share empowering stories on a variety of topics, including work, education, health, finance, relationships, politics, and more, all while remaining anonymous. Users can upvote these stories, similar to a leaderboard system. The more a story is liked, the higher it climbs, allowing more women to read, engage with, and feel empowered by it.

How we built it

We developed the application using Android Studio with Dart, Firebase, APIs, Swift, Ruby, C++, C, and CMake.

Challenges we ran into

During the development of She Zone, we faced a significant challenge with the category dropdown on the Write Story screen. Double-tapping to select a category caused the dropdown to move unexpectedly. This issue occurred due to Flutter's UI rebuilding mechanism, which disrupted the dropdown's positioning during state changes. To solve this problem, we explored various resources, including the Flutter documentation on Stack and Positioned widgets, community discussions about state management in Flutter UI, and conducted experiments with different UI layouts such as OverlayEntry and ModalBottomSheet. We discovered that using Positioned inside a Stack caused unexpected shifts in the UI when the dropdown's visibility state changed because Flutter dynamically recalculates widget positions when we call setState. To stabilize the dropdown and prevent unintended movement, we implemented a structured approach. We controlled visibility with a boolean variable, _isDropdownOpen, instead of triggering a complete UI rebuild. We introduced a fixed space using SizedBox(height: _isDropdownOpen ? 200 : 24) to maintain a consistent layout. Additionally, we wrapped the dropdown in a Container with a fixed height to avoid any shifts and used a GestureDetector to toggle the dropdown's visibility without interfering with Flutter’s state update system.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

One of our proudest accomplishments is successfully developing a fully functioning app instead of a website for the first time. This experience presented a completely new challenge for us, as we had to navigate the complexities of mobile app development using Flutter.

What we learned

Creating this app instead of a website was a new and exciting challenge for us. We explored mobile app development using Flutter and Firebase. We learned how to effectively manage UI state, integrate Firebase for real-time data storage, and navigate iOS development, including debugging and addressing platform-specific constraints. This experience enhanced our adaptability and problem-solving skills, enabling us to work confidently with new technologies beyond just web development.

What's next for She Zone

For She Zone, we plan to integrate an AI moderation layer to automatically flag offensive posts, ensuring a safer and more positive environment for users. This will involve implementing a machine learning model that analyzes text content in real time, utilizing natural language processing (NLP) techniques to detect harmful language. By adding this feature, we will enhance the efficiency of content moderation while maintaining an inclusive and supportive community.