SwitchYourLoad

The main page, where you can select a profile for who is starting the laundry load.
After you select a profile, you choose which kind of load you are putting in.
You're almost done! Now, you select how long your laundry load is going to take.
The anticipation is killing me!

Inspiration

When you're sharing a laundry load, it's hard to organize who's clothes are in the washer. When you don't recognize a laundry load in the washing machine, it becomes a process to figure out who's it is. This makes doing laundry something that can become tedious and annoying. Our goal was to make a project that made life easier for people everywhere. We came up with something in our daily routines that could be improved and created a website to do it.

What it does

Our website SwitchYourLoad helps organize who is doing a laundry load. When logging onto the website, the user creates a profile complete with a picture. When the user puts a laundry load into the washing machine, they track the type of load they are washing. The website then uses a built-in countdown timer to track how long the load will take. Once the load is complete, the website alerts the user. While the load is running, the website displays whos load is in the washing machine, and how long until it is complete.

How we built it

We collaborated using "repl.it", a text editor online. All the images and icons on the website were created using Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges we ran into, was creating the countdown timer. We really struggled with creating the "hours" portion and spent a majority of the hackathon trying to fix bugs we had in our code. Unfortunately, we didn't have enough time to iron out all of the bugs from the timer select.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Something we're super proud of is the design and user experience of the app. Building our app with the Bulma CSS framework, we were able to quickly and easily design a UI that we really liked.

What we learned

All of the creators on this project were varied in skill. Some were experienced in JavaScript, some in HTML, and some in design. This meant that in order to complete our goal, we had to work together and communicate. We learned how to support each other, and work together to ensure that we were not duplicating effort.

What's next for SwitchYourLoad

We plan to re-build the app from the ground up as a PWA, which would allow the app to be installable on devices that could be mounted to a washing machine. Next, we want to add text-message notifications when the load is done for the person who is switching the load, as well as for additional profiles who want to get their laundry load in directly after the preview load. Another thing we want to add is a way to schedule loads for the future and collaborate on schedules between profiles. We want to take SwitchYourLoad to the next level!