Each year, NC State University sends a group of students down to Orlando, Florida to serve for a week at the charity Give Kids The World Village. According to their website,
Give Kids The World Village is an 84-acre, nonprofit "storybook" resort in Central Florida. Here, children with critical illnesses and their families are treated to weeklong, cost-free vacations.
In addition to spending a week serving in person at the village, I also had the opportunity to assist with a charity fundraiser that NC State students were hosting. Children from the local community were invited to play in a life-size version of the Candyland board game, complete with decorations and live actors. The children themselves act as the player pawn pieces.
However, if the kids are halfway across the gymnasium standing on a red square, how could they possibly draw the next card to tell them which space to progress toward next? If they had to run all the way to the start to draw a card on every turn, they could easily get tired or forget their spot on the winding pathway.
To mitigate this issue, I designed a Progressive Web Application (PWA) that ran on digital devices of all sizes and strengths. Using modern web frameworks managed by Webpack, I created an accessible and intuitive interface that all participants could find in a web browser. Once the site was loaded once, no network connection was necessary. All of the data is cached client-side so that, if signal is weak in any given part of the Candyland game, the players can still interact with the digital deck.
You can give the app a spin here, and as usual the source code is available on GitHub!
Among the handful of projects that I completed during my undergraduate career at NC State, this little app brings me the most joy. Although it wasn't terribly complex to design or implement, I got to witness for the first time the power of software developers to bring tangible delight to the people they love. The simple blessing of a skill that makes others happy is what motivates me every day to pursue a career in computer science!
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