Created: November 22, 2020 for Hack Western 7 || Link to our presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmUUxrmwK_M&feature=emb_logo
Entering university, we truly did not understand the extent of gender discrepancies within all industries. It wasn't until we began applying to finance clubs, when we saw the majority of the leadership teams were men. Our goal with this app is to create a safe and inclusive environment for everyone, including women, to immerse themselves within the finance industry.
Bird is created as an app to educate people about basic financial skills. There are little to no accessible places for women to learn about finance, as the industry is dominated by men. We created an engaging app with 3 different levels that test the knowledge of users.
We used Figma to create a polished interface, and Python 3 to program a prototype of a session with all three stages. Stage 1 was built using simple array matching, with each button containing a term and displaying its definition upon being clicked. Stage 2 was also programmed using arrays, asking the user to click the term that corresponded with its respective definition. The arrays were randomized upon each attempt, which ensured a more effective learning experience. Stage 3 was a "fill-in-the-blank" format, where we programmed a function that would ignore capitalization of the user's input.
As first year students, our programming experience and knowledge was fairly limited, making it far more difficult to polish and perfect our programs. In order to make up for the programming knowledge discrepancies, we spent hours learning how to integrate a GUI into python, and we're quite happy with the final results.
As first-time hackathon participants, we experimented with Figma and GUIs for the first time. We are very proud of our accomplishments and are thankful that Hack Western provided us with an opportunity develop our skills.
Through Hack Western 7, we learned that perfection isn't everything. Given our lack of technical skills, we have learned to compromise. Although our project is currently not fully operational, we were able to use the skills and resources that we did have to create a vision for a product that could grow to have many positive implications.
In the near future, we hope to grow Bird's implications by partnering with companies and clubs with similar goals, such as Women in Technology Society and Women in Capital Markets, to further expand our reach to the target audience.