We wanted to develop a tool that would make it simple for people to determine whether a species is invasive or not and that would enable them to take immediate action to either give or receive advice from their fellow members of the community. We identified that Google Lens does not have the ability to detect whether a species is invasive or not, as it returns all sources that contain a similar appearance. That is why we wanted to invent a program that allows users to input and output the result of whether a species is invasive or not. By having communities collaborate to exchange ideas in a forum, utilizing this data can help motivate citizens to take immediate action and help us build a sustainable ecosystem for future generations.
Ecovader is a forum platform for community members to connect and work together to control invasive species and sustain the ecosystem. Users will need to create an account, choose their region, and once they have completed registration, they can post, comment, and share. If the user wants to identify whether a species is invasive or not, they can upload a photo, and our program will identify it. If the species is considered to be invasive, our program will provide contact information to report this issue.
We first brainstormed how we wanted to tackle the invasive species issue. We originally wanted to build an educational gardening simulator, but it ultimately ended up as a web application so that it better aligned with our solution. Then, we used Figma to build a prototype of what we visualized the program to be. We then use the prototype to convert this idea into an interactive website by utilizing React, Studio Code, and Tailwind CSS to build the framework for our actual app. We used programming languages like HTML, Javascript, and CSS within our frameworks to build interactive buttons and inputs from the user.
It took a while to decide what season and issue we wanted to solve because many of our ideas had already been invented. We wanted to create something that we could make with little to no experience. When we encountered an error in our program, we worked our hardest to troubleshoot and have a working web app. Another challenge we faced was time pressure. Because we have limited time to be able to create a fully completed project, we all made personal sacrifices to commit and dedicate time into completing our part of the project.
Our group is entirely made up of high schoolers who have little to no experience in coding, and we all met on the first day of the hackathon, not knowing each other at all. For most of our group members, this is the first hackathon we've ever attended. As a result of submitting this project, this displays our potential to succeed in the other hackathons. We faced obstacles together, and we overcame them, which ultimately made us a stronger team. An example of that was on the first day, when more than half of us had to leave as we were not staying overnight. To overcome this, we had a virtual meeting once we arrived home to finalize our plan so that we could start our projects as soon as possible. Another accomplishment we made was creating a mobile-friendly app and a web app version on two different domains (ecovader.biz and ecovader-mobile.biz). We are also proud that our app features diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it tackles complex issues like invasive species that, from our research, Ontario has not been investing a lot to solve.
Many of our group members learned how to use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the first time, and we were always relieved to solve any errors that we encountered. This is also our first time using React.js and Tailwind CSS as a framework and using Figma to design our website. Additionally, we learned how to set up multiple domains and do web hosting on Vercel.
Our next steps for ecovader are to convert our use of AI into streamlined identification, bootstrap the mobile version so that it offers more services to users, and deploy the mobile version into an app that will be featured on Google Play and the App Store. We are also hoping to implement more accessibility features to make it more user-friendly for people with disabilities, such as the ability to enlarge text sizes and incorporating text-to-speech.