Hack for Good
The Angular and NativeScript teams teamed up last month to organise the first ng-ns Hack For Good — an online hackathon with prizes, where all participants were asked to build mobile apps with NativeScript Angular for NGOs and good causes.
The rules were quite simple: starting from Thursday the 12th of September, participants — working alone or in teams of up to 4 people — had 96 hours to build a Native Mobile App — using NativeScript and Angular.
Outline
In this article we will:
- talk about the history
- run through the statistics
- explain the judging criteria
- showcase all the winners
- talk about the spirit of the event
NativeScript Angular
NativeScript is an open source framework for building truly native mobile apps with JavaScript.
It allows you to use web skills, like TypeScript, Angular and CSS, and get native UI & performance on iOS and Android.
With NativeScript Angular, you can build apps for both iOS and Android from a single project.
The numbers
This was the 1st edition of this event.
We had 100+ participant from 30+ different countries and 6 different continents, competing for 4 days.
We received 10+ submissions, awarded 5 prizes, and we consider 100% of participants as winners.
Winners
Picking the winners wasn’t easy, as each project was great and they all deserved a big prize 🤗
In order to pick the winners, we need clear criteria for us to judge all of the entries.
Judging
Each submission was judged based on the following 3 categories:
Innovation — How original are the idea and execution?
Design — How well does it look and feel to use?
Utility — Is the app offering a service I’d use again and again?
Announcement
The winner and the second prize have been selected based on the highest score across all 3 categories. Additionally, we awarded the prizes for the best submissions in each category.
Stanimira Vlaeva announced the winners at Angular Connect.
Here is a more in-depth overview of each winning team, their project, and the good cause they set out to help. 🎉
The Innovation Prize — $500
The Innovation Prize was awarded to the Team Tech4GoodPH for their app for Solid Waste Management in the Philippines.
From the judging panel
We liked the idea of using maps to visualise the issues with garbage waste management, and also for looking to solve the problem through a community building solid data reports, which could be used as solid evidence to move things forward.
Although the app is aimed at the Philippines, we can see this being used in other locations across the planet.
What was your idea?
The Philippines is frequently rated as one of the least disciplined countries on garbage disposal. This leads to disasters such as flooding and landslides that further endanger millions of lives.
Our project, Bayanihan Maps, aims to support NGOs and Local Government Units in their programs and/or policies on Solid Waste Management by enabling users to report locations that need improvement (Bad) and proper locations for garbage disposal (Good). The data that our app collects will be made open and accessible for analysis.
Ramon A
Do you plan to continue working on this project?
Yes, we do, and we already have some ideas on what we want to do next.
Future developments will encourage users to report by having some sort of gamification in the app and will also be able to generate intelligent insights by having big data analysis on the backend.
We’ll also have a way to mark bad locations as “Resolved”, after which the marker and rating will change.
We will also have a feature to facilitate “Clean up drives” where an organiser can specify an area in the map for the drive. The clean up drive can be “Joined” by users who want to join. There will be a “Scoring System” during a drive, and the organisers can “Add Rewards” for categories such as “Highest Score for Resolving Bad Areas” or “Highest Score for Reporting Bad Areas”.
Andro J
The Design Prize — $500
The Design Prize was awarded to the Team William for their shiny app helping for TU.TO.R.
From the judging panel
This project won the design prize, because of its great use of layouts, nice rounded corners everywhere (yay to the rounded rectangles), but importantly, you don’t often get to play with a menu that is fun and yet it does its job.
What was your idea?
I worked on the app for patients to track their activity. I focused mainly on the user experience, experimenting with the animations in NativeScript — check out the red sidebar on the left, and drag it to the right, and wait for a little bit, drag it again to the right to close it.
Juan W
The Utility Prize — $500
The Utility Prize was awarded to the Team TNS for their practical app for Ronald McDonald House Charities.
From the judging panel
This app won the Utility prize, because of its focus on it being practical and useful. It might not be the shiniest kid on the block, but it simply does the job and it is quite extensible, as the admins of the app system can easily add new areas and tasks that the users of the app could do.
What was your idea?
Our project is a kiosk app that management at the Ronald McDonald House Charities can use to sign in residents, visitors, and guests. As well as manage residents (know who is in the house or out) and daily chores (have they been completed and by who). It will help reduce the workload for management at the houses so that they can focus on continuing to improve the facilities and amenities for families that are staying there.
Sam G
Who did you build it for?
Ronald McDonald House Charities, they supply room and board for families who have children in the local children’s cancer hospital so they have a place to stay while their child is undergoing treatment.
Tyler B
Do you plan to continue working on this project?
Yes! We showed the app to our charity, and they wanted to start using it. We are working with them to improve the styling and making it easier for them to integrate with their workflow.
Sam and Tyler
The Second Prize — $1000
The Second Prize was awarded to the Team Bessia for the app that helps organise Plogging events.
From the judging panel
This project was a very close second. Yet again, we fell in love with an app that had a great balance between great looks and a very interesting initiative, where you clean your community of garbage while jogging with like-minded people.
What was your idea?
It is a project for people who are keen on plogging. The application shows planned and finished events, teams and users who participated in these events and their result (total collected garbage and results by categories: metal, plastic, glass). You can see results by race, team, runner. If you are authorised, you can join the event or a team and watch your personal results.
Nickolay K
Do you plan to continue working on this project?
I’m sure of it. Now, I have only an MVP, that can demonstrate the idea and I am going to develop the full-fledged app.
I’ve demonstrated this app to the participants of the Belarusian Plogging races. And they liked the idea so much.
Nickolay K
The Winner — $2000
The winning submission came from Team Alex with the project for Plastic Oceans UK.
From the judging panel
This project immediately caught our eyes. It had everything we were looking for: a beautiful UI with innovative ideas, and most of all, we could see ourselves using it to reduce the plastic waste and the pollution that goes with it.
What was your idea?
My project was an information/donation/tracker/map app for a charity called “Plastic Oceans UK”. It gave some information around the charity and plastic pollution as a whole. It also allowed you to see nearby recycling stations, track your own recycling efforts, and, of course, donate!
Alex E
Who did you build it for?
I chose Plastic Oceans UK because I believe strongly in helping to protect our planet and saving marine life all over the world. Also, it was a close charity to myself as I live in the UK — always good to support local charities!
Alex E
The spirit
Even though this was an event with cash prizes, every participant joined in with a great attitude of making the world a better place. There were multiple cases where someone got stuck, only to receive help from someone from another team.
But even when it came to individual submissions, people were more excited about the difference they could make, than winning the prizes. Here is a message I received from one of the contestants who didn’t win any of the prizes.
You don’t know how happy I was when I got your message. Winning wasn’t my top priority in this contest, but doing something to help NGO is the mission!
Just to let you guys know, we actually published the app to Google Play store and we received a huge compliment from the community. It’s been quite a journey. The International Federation of Pedestrian (like the main organisation of pedestrian in the world) actually contacted us and asked us to translate the application to English so they can deploy it to all countries! So much joy!!!
Richard V
Final words
Events like this demonstrate the real power of the community and the potential of how much good we can all make when we put our hearts into it.
It is good to get out of our daily jobs and use our skills for something that we all believe in and make a real difference to our communities and the planet.
Hack for Good 2.0
We have thoroughly enjoyed this event, the vibe and the apps that the participants built.
We have a lot of ideas on how to make this event better and help generate more fabulous submissions for next time. Please stay tuned — we will announce the next hackathon via the Angular and the NativeScript twitter handles.
