TechnicalSpec.txt

The end product will assist with a few specific tasks. First and foremost, it will help parents in finding accessible activities nearby 
that are accessible to their child’s specific disability and interests. Second, it will allow organizations who put on accessible events 
to advertise directly to their target audience. Third, it will allow parents to rate and comment on activities based on their experience 
and how accessible the event was for their family. Our goals include creating a platform on which people can search and find activities, 
and a way for organizations to advertise activities. 

An activity this will assist in is allowing the parent of a child with disabilities to search on an app to find an activity that suits 
their child’s abilities and interests. This first involves downloading the app or going to the website. This will render the home page 
which contains the normal search page with event summaries. Then the parent can open the event filters to select what kind of activity 
they want to do, the date they want to do it, the abilities the event caters to, the age range the event caters to, and other 
characteristics. Then they will be taken back to the search page where the activities that meet their desires will be displayed for the 
parents to scroll through. Then it’s up to the parent to select an activity, add it to their “Favorites” so they can find it again later, 
formally register for the event (if it’s required) and attend the event. Then, after the event, the parent will be able to leave comments
or rating to allow other people to have more information on the organization/event in the future.

This will also assist with allowing people to advertise their or their organization’s event. There will be an in-app form for the 
organizer to fill out that will add the activity directly to the database. The organizer simply needs to open that form, fill out the 
information required, and click submit. Certain events and event information can be stripped directly from Facebook pages of 
organizations that put on many relevant events. 

The user needs to open and interact with the app. The organizations that want to advertise need to enter their event information directly 
to the app, or enter Facebook events on their organization’s page.

The technology needs to collect data by using a Facebook event scraper from known pages that have accessible activities. It also needs to 
collect data from the in-app event input form. Each event will be saved in a database and ordered by the date of the event. For recurring
events, it must store each instance of the activity as its own event.  The app must also provide an interface for users to search the data
as described--sorting by disability, age, event type, and store user information so as to allow users to save events to their Favorites. 

Finding an event to participate in will be done (mostly) by an abled caretaker. Posting some of the events will be done by the event 
organizer. Rating the event will be done by the caretakers. The app users must be able to read and interact with a smartphone or 
computer. 

To get started, the user will download app or open the website. They can then perform the task of searching, inputting an event, or 
rating an activity anywhere that has internet access for the user’s smartphone or computer. The task can be performed as often as the 
user wants and the only resource constraint is that they must have access to the internet and a smartphone or computer. 

There are a few things that can go wrong. Most importantly, an event could be canceled or details changed without that change being 
updated on the app. Furthermore, an event could be displayed as accessible to a certain group but not actually be accessible in reality.  

The user interface for this app has mostly been determined by the HCDE members of the ActoKids team. They have designed a prototype 
that has been user tested already. It includes a normal search page, a map search page, a calendar search page and a favorites page, as 
well as an activity details pages for each event. 

To collect data, we will need to scrape Facebook pages for events and put them into database. We also must create form input for event 
right into the database. This form will have some required information and some optional information. We will use structured database, 
and will need to create a database for production and a database for testing. To make the user interface and display data, we will need 
to choose a method to build a cross platform app and implement the interface developed by the HCDE team. 

For our project, we will be focusing on implementing the database. First we will figure out how to manage the database. We need to 
determine what fields we are going to collect and what types will they be. We need to create a good database design and decide what 
database and servers to use. This will likely take us one week.  After the database has been designed, we will need to implement the 
database. This includes setting up the database on the server. We expect this portion to take about two weeks. We will then set up an 
event scraper to get information from Facebook for events, and start using it to gather data which we expect will take approximately 
a week. This will be challenging because Facebook does not collect data about age range or accessibility so classifying the events will 
be difficult. 

The following are the next steps we would take to finish building the app. First, we’d create a script to run the event scraper and set 
it up on a service to run every two hours or so to update the information. Then we would learn React to build native apps for iOS and 
Android. We would first implement the event searching and filtering interface designed by the ActoKids team.  We would then create the 
Activity Details interface designed by the team. After those basic functions were implemented, we would expand the number of events in 
our database by creating an in-app form for adding in new event information and implementing Google Calendar event scraping. Following 
that, we would personalize the experience by creating a way to log-in with Facebook or Google+ and add in the ability to “Favorite” an 
event. Then we’d add in the calendar search page that the ActoKids team designed. Following that, we would add in the ability to comment
or rate an event or organization. Finally, we would add in the map search page that the ActoKids team designed. 


Tasks: 

Registration										5 hours 	
		Register with Facebook

Enter event										10 hours
            	Enter event, populate spreadsheet, merge data into database, provide user with update key 

Update/delete event									8 hours
		Enter update key, retrieve event information, user edits information, populate a spreadsheet, replace current event with updated event. 

Display events										20 hours
            	Initially display all events happening around me. Filter list of activities with: Checkboxes for activity types, Checkboxes for disability types, checkboxes for frequency, checkboxes for day of week, checkboxes for time of day, slider for cost, slider for distance. Also have search bar for key words.

Rate activity										8 hours
		Enter comment using Facebook API, populate spreadsheet, store it in comments table in database

Updates/delete rate									
		Update and delete rates will done through Facebook API


		
By Friday 1/27: 
Basic database design of what fields we want for the event data for events and separate database for comments 
Start learning React 
	
By Friday 2 / 3:
Implement log-in
Start a local database--postgres 
Start event scrapper
Basic app that you can log in to
	
By Friday 2 / 10:
Enter event on app and store into database
Event scraper works
	
By Friday 2/17
Search for events and filter by different things 
Add Facebook comments API