A student sosciety - lead project based at the University of Edinburgh focusing on the development of Hyperloop.
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A strong team collaboration makes the dream work!
The MaskIt project was created as part of a programming & innovation competition (Hackathon) by me, and 2 other CS students from the University of Edinburgh.
The competition we attended is called Hack 4 the People, which is organized by students from the University of Harvard in Massachusetts. I initially received an invitation from the school email to join and eventually I got introduced to 2 other students from my school.
The idea of creating MaskIt came through a long brainstorming conversation with my team. The competition lasted for 3 days, where we eventually came up with a prototype of the concept. MaskIt would be a mobile app that would give you a detailed description of what each mask does and in which scenarios it is most effective. The goal of the competition was to create a prototype of the idea as well as create a pre-recorded video presentation of it.
MaskIt presentation at the Hack 4 the People Presentation Day on the 23rd of August 2020.
We eventually won a prize for the best use of Google Cloud services, and we were one of the 28 out of 381 judged teams invited to participate in a mentorship program organized by Google Employees.
Through the mentorship program, we were assigned a Software Engineer from Google, who helped us take the idea from the very beginning to the end. We began with brainstorming, prioritizing features for a prototype, creating a timeline, and were offered general guidance when it came to technology choices, as well as receiving consistent feedback on the design of the app.
Eventually, we were one of the 13 teams invited to present what we have done throughout the mentorship program to a panel of judges from Google in May 2020. This is the first Hackathon I won after participating in 6 more in the past without receiving recognition. When I joined my first Hackathon, I ended up in last place. After joining more, I learned how to work better with people under pressure and became a better communicator.
MaskIt final pre-recorded presentation to the Google Panel.
Given we were only 1 out of two non-US based teams who made it that far, we were also featured in the local news outlet of Edinburgh for our achievement.
The members of the team were: Adrien, Eve, and me, where Adrien was mainly in charge of the UX/UI design, Eve was the researcher and database developer, and I was the main developer of the app. The app can be downloaded for free from the Google Play Store.
Download the MaskIt app from the Google Play store by clicking here.
The MaskIt Team.
