WebApp Plekkie
An online tool that encourages people to go explore new places within their own neighbourhood, by playing into the excitement of trying something new in a ‘scavenger hunt’ like way. The tool makes it possible to explore within the time you have. Making it easy to go on an adventure, even in your 30-minute lunch break!
Scope - Sustainable Tourism
This project was done just before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, so the impact of the pandemic is not added into the scope yet. The idea of the project came from a conversation I had with friends, where we concluded “I know more people that have been to Thailand, than Terschelling”. (Terschelling is one of the islands in the north of the Netherlands). In our current society traveling overseas has become more common than exploring our own area. Cheap international flights made it possible to travel great distances and discover the world. Unfortunately, this way of traveling also has a large climate impact. How can we encourage people to find excitement closer to home, within an area that is reachable by more sustainable ways of transportation?
Programming a WebApp from scratch
I developed the web app ‘Plekkie’ that will generate a random location to discover within your own area. After giving the app access to your location, you will be asked which kind of place you would like to go, what mode of transport you would like to use (categories: walking, cycling, driving, public transport) & how much time you want to use to reach your destination. To contribute to the feeling of adventure the application does not show the name of the place you are going, only the coordinates. These can be opened directly in Google Maps, so that you can start your journey to new local adventures! The web app also has a login feature, enabling users to save the places that the app has previously generated for them. This will also allow to exclude previously visited places from the new results, so the app will never recommend the same place twice.
“I want to try out a new place to have lunch that I can reach within 10
minutes by bike”
(possible user scenario)
“I want to take a day trip to a nice
quiet nature area that I can reach within 2 hours by public transport”
(possible user scenario)
‘Plekkie’ was my final project within the Minor Computer Programming at the University of Amsterdam. Apart from programming the site, I also built the algorithm behind ‘Plekkie’ myself. This was really fun, since it was a challenge to combine data from different databases (mostly Google Places API, Distance Matrix & Django). Although I still view myself as a designer more than a programmer, I do enjoy having the skill to build and understand online structures when necessary.
This was an individual project within the Minor Computer Programming at the University of Amsterdam