Rally

Introduction

Rally was a group project for CS 147: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction. We were tasked with designing and building a product using the design thinking process.

We went from user interviews, to defining our goals, to ideating, to prototyping, and plenty of iterating and testing to get to our final product. Through our need-finding, we found that political events are impersonal and inconvenient, so we made an app for finding public transportation for and friends for political events to make civic engagement an easier, more social, and accessible decision. We created a concept video, as well as low-fi (paper), med-fi (Figma), and hi-fi prototypes (React Native).

Problem & Solution Overview

Going to political events can be inconvenient, inaccessible, and impersonal -- Rally makes civic engagement an easy decision, giving users transportation recommendations and connecting them with friends who want to show out to events. Our platform suggests political events based on location and informs users about which of their friends are interested in those events. Rally connects users to these friends and creates group messages to help coordinate transportation to the event itself. By leveraging these connections and providing transportation suggestions, we hope to create a fun and casual community surrounding civic engagement.

Reflections

I was one of two main app developers, as well as the product manager. As the product manager, I updated our team calendar and reached out to set meeting times and meeting agendas. I checked in on how team members were doing and corresponded with our section leader frequently to ensure any questions were addressed and that our app was on track. On the design side, I helped create the UI for the app on Figma and translated that mock-up to the hi-fi. On the development end, I implemented Google Firebase and advanced third-party libraries such as React Native Maps API, ParallaxScrollView, and Gifted Chat.

This was the first time I ever created an app and used front-end programming languages. There was definitely a steep learning curve on the technical side of things. I ended the quarter with a love for design, a deeper interest in exploring React and React Native, as well as the confidence to spearhead and execute a project on a tight deadline.

Check out our repository here!

Read our final report here!

App Demo

We were awarded 2nd runner up for Best App Demo at the CS 147 final expo. Here is a video clip of our app.

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