Introduction
One of the things I appreciated about OSU’s post-bacc program is the multitude of portfolio projects that we create for our classes. I’ve appreciated that we were given assignments where we are able to utilize different tech stacks that we’ve learned into projects that we are able to showcase. My favorite project so far is a hiking web-application that I created with my team for CS 361.
What is it?
My group’s project, named Pathfinder, is a web application designed to help hiking enthusiasts find hiking trail recommendations. One of the main features of the application is a fitness calculator that takes in the user’s basic information to calculate their general fitness level. The application then matches the user to a hiking trail based on their preference – for example, a user of “medium fitness” can decide they want a challenge and they can select trails on the more difficult end.
After selecting a hike, a user can then inspect the “Gear Recommendations”, which will retrieve attributes at the hike as well as current weather at its location in order to recommend what clothing/equipment to bring to the trail.
Tech Stack / Implementation
The tech stack was very simple for this website. Our team used HTML/CSS/JS with Semantic UI as a CSS framework. We had initially debated on going with a backend, but in the end we decided that using a 3rd party hiking trail API would be simpler and more effective. Our team of 4 developers used Agile methodology for the end-to-end development of this project. We worked in 2 week sprints, using an Asana Kanban board for task management, in order to implement the various User Stories we had established.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed this project because we were able to come out with a pretty polished product that I could imagine would be actually useful to anyone who hikes. In addition, I really loved getting my feet wet with Agile and working collaboratively with other developers. The website is found here in case you would like to give it a try! I am hoping that the capstone project will also become one of my favorites.
