Innovate through the storm

A few days ago our team had the opportunity to participate in an open hackathon, designed to find, create and execute ideas, which potentially can help with the situation COVID-19 has put the world into. The hackathon was organised by the Airbus Humanity Lab and its duration was 48 hours. Needless to say, the participants had to act fast to develop and introduce their solutions in order to implement the best of them. The importance of taking part in similar kinds of initiatives is extremely high. As a technological and creative company, we were honoured and obliged to engage in it and to contribute in every way we could. 

The process

Our team consisted of four developers and two UI/UX designers. They kicked off with a remote brainstorming session and generated a lot of ideas. They stuck with four but only two of them were picked up for further development.

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Those promising solutions were:

• Idea #1: A platform for reporting individuals / businesses who don't follow the safety measures imposed by the local government
  
  
• Idea #2: An app with information regarding up-to-date availability of medical supplies at local pharmacies 

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Due to the short amount of time the team had, they opted for the first idea. The aim was to create a platform which will help the responsible institutions to govern the regulations imposed by the local government. We all are aware of the positive effect they have if followed properly and we want to maximise it. 

The design and development of the solution fit the time frame perfectly. As with any project though there were underlying challenges that popped up during the development. The main one was defining the MVP. The team decided to strip down the platform of functionalities with lesser value and keep only those which will make the final version as useful as possible.

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After a lot of hard work, creative mayhem and programming magic - COVision was born. A simple and compact platform, similar to a social medium where everyone can report groups of people, organizations or businesses who do not follow the safety measures. That can be anything from open restaurants that should be closed to large gatherings of people. The purpose of COVision is to potentially slow down the spread of the virus and help with isolation and social distancing. Further development can include the institutions responsible for keeping the regulations and give them access to reports sent from the users so that they can act accordingly and swiftly.

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Covision in a nutshell

‍From a UI/UX point of view the team aimed for a minimalistic approach where accessibility and readability are paramount. That’s why they opted for plenty of white space, a simple font, brighter hues and subtle interactions and effects which complement the overall design in a non-intrusive way.

And from a more technical point of view, the team decided to make the architecture of the application entirely serverless and to deploy it on an AWS environment. The Front-end structure is hosted on S3 bucket. All requests are going through an API Gateway, which is operated by Lambda functions. The visual content which is uploaded in the app is stored on a separate S3 bucket.

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The final result

After the official pitch with the rest of the finalists the idea was put on hold by the jury. Nevertheless, we are proud of what the team achieved. To tackle a problem, design it and fully develop it in 48 hours definitely is an accomplishment in our book. 

Furthermore, the exercise proved a valuable educational and inspirational source. The fact that numerous teams, from all over the world gathered and engaged in solving tough problems during these unprecedented times is enough to say that by collaborating together - we can deal with anything and achieve the impossible. If you have the resources, we at Technofy, urge you to participate in similar causes because your idea might be the one which tips the scales in favour of a quicker global recovery!

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Explore the clickable prototype of the COVIsion app here.

Last but not least - stay home and stay healthy.