Our project for this course was to work with Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI) in creating an application to monitor and measure the environmental impact of electric vehicles. HEI is about building a sustainable future. By using electric cars instead of conventional gas cars, we can reduce our carbon dioxide footprint and create a cleaner environment. The application we were to build will help HEI and their shareholders to see the difference made on the environment when people make the switch to electric vehicles for their daily use.
My group was called Environment Overflow and the application we have created is called E-Impact. E-Impact main goal is to interpret data provided by HEI and provide customers a way to log and see the differences they can make on the environment. We present the data using charts that show amount how much fuel and miles saved, which modes of transportation they often use, and the amount of greenhouse carbon (GHC) emission created in each day. The charts we provide are easy to read. They also contain functionalities such as zoom, changing the scope, and can even be downloaded. E-Impact can be used to log automotive trips and then reflected on a graph to see their overall impact on the environment. We have also a “What If” function that shows the number of miles, fuel, GHC emissions, saved or produced if they choose to use different mode of transportation or use an electric vehicle. We hope the “What If” will encourage others to see the differences they can make.
E-Impact also contains other features to help Hawaii stay green. We want users of our application to be informed and to let them know what they can do to be part of the Hawaiian community. E-Impact provides information of other organizations such as 808 Cleanups and Hawaii Wildlife Fund and links to their sites. When a user is signed up to E-Impact, they can also see the differences of the users that are from their local areas. We believe that E-Impact can inspire users to do their part in keeping Hawaii clean.
My experiences with ICS-414 in Spring 2021 were difficult, but interesting because of the circumstances of distance learning. Doing a group project in conjunction with a global pandemic has created a unique situation where collaboration is more difficult than a traditional classroom setting. Group communication was completely done via online through the Discord and Zoom. And of course, we used Github to manage our code.
One of the issues I have faced when working in a group with distance learning was being unable to communicate my groupmates in a more personal level. Since we used only voice chats, I would not be able to recognize a groupmate if I were to see them. I believe this has hindered our ability to communicate effectively in designing and fixing of our application. Also, my group has a total of eight members including myself. This is largest group project I have done so far. It makes me wonder if we could do more with our application if we were able to collaborate in person.
Still, in my reflection of E-Impact, I am still quite amazed of the application we were able to create together. We were able to create a functional site to present to HEI within weeks. For every milestone passed, we have added much more functionality to the application. I look forward to the next group project whether be for school or during my career in ICS.