# Liber Populus

## Vote like your life depends on it.

By many accounts, this upcoming 2020 election will be one of the most contentious to date. With a global pandemic,
economic crisis, racial unrest, two starkly different candidates, and a polarized nation, it is important that everyone who is able to partakes in the democratic process at the heart of the American story.

This is where **Liber Populus** comes in.

**Liber Populus** – Latin for *“free people”*

**Liber Populus** provides an assortment of tools and information to equip every voter with what they need to ensure they register and cast their ballot while avoiding obstacles such as voter suppression, ballot filing mistakes, and more!
## Inspiration

##### In the sphere of Awareness, we wanted to design an innovative way to make the diffusion and sharing of political information more accurate, transparent, and accessible through technology.

Common news sources implement ranking systems that create an echo chamber for opinions and even misinformation. We designed Citizen X to not only inform citizens about their representatives but also to engage them, foster discussions, and inspire them to expand their knowledge about their political climates by connecting them to further resources.

## What it does

##### Citizen X is building the next generation of informed citizens.

Our iOS app allows users to use their voice to ask about representatives on different scopes of focus, such as their local, state, and national legislators. Users can even learn about representatives in locations other than their own and be guided to sites and social media outlets where they can learn more. Citizen X is an information funnel that doesn't optimize for views or impressions; it tells the people what you want to know.

## How we built it

##### Citizen X uses SoundHound's Houndify SDK and Phone2Action's Legislator Web API.

Citizen X uses technology to ease the process of diffusion while encouraging users to stay engaged through an interactive user experience. Through voice interactions with SoundHound, users enage and tell Citizen X what they want to learn about: many or a single legislator(s) as well as their area of interest. Citizen X uses this information to query Phone2Action's Legislator API to retrieve trusted overview information about representatives. Citizen X was built with Xcode in Swift for iOS 12.

## Challenges we ran into

##### Unfamiliar SDK and Web API territory + a complex view hierarchy.

Using the SDKs proved challenging at first, especially with regards to analyzing the phrases spoken to SoundHound as well as the parsing of the JSON retrieved from Phone2Action. Equally as difficult was building this information into a user interface that kept users encouraged, focused, and informed. We spent much of our time refining the stacking card layout, tuning the interface, and supporting the voice interaction history.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

##### Citizen X improves people's political awareness in an unbiased and self-driven manner.

We love how Citizen X makes the user feel. Users feel like they're having a conversation about politics in order to better themselves. Additionally, because Citizen X links users to trusted sites of information such as Vote Smart and the Center for Responsive Politics, we've given citizens a way to learn without being subjected to algorithmic recommendations. People can start by learning about the representatives within their communities and then expand their scope of interest up to their state and nation.

## What we learned

##### Experience, experience, experience.

We learned how to present meaningful information and engage users in ways we had never had experience with before: voice chatting. Additionally, we gained lots of experience using an unfamiliar Web API and validating data and images retrieved from the web. Building the complex card stack layout put our UIKit knowledge to the test as well as our ability to create a fluid and memory-efficient interface.

## What's next for Citizen X

##### Support more advanced queries & ship Citizen X

We hope to future-proof the use of our voice chat API so that we can share Citizen X with the world. Alongside this, we hope to support more complex voice interactions and make different types of queries and information cards available.
## Inspiration

My Grandmother is from Puerto Rico, and she only speaks Spanish. She recently tried applying for passport, but she could not fill out the document because she does not understand English. After doing some research, there are about 45 million people in America alone with a similar issue. And in the world, that number is 6.5 billion. Especially considering America is the most sought out country to live in in the entire world. But now, there is a solution.

## What it does

The cross-platform app allows one to upload important documents converted to one's native language. After the user responds, either manually or vocally in their chosen language, and the document converts back to English, both the questions and answers - then is ready for download and exporting.

## How we built it

Front end implementing flutter, dart.
Back end using Spring with Java, Google Cloud API, Heroku, PDF Box.

## Challenges we ran into

Initially, we wanted to be able to upload and documents, have the software scan the documents, interpret it and convert it to any selected language. However, for our MVP, we were able to successfully implement 4 languages, Spanish, English, Dutch, German.
Another challenge was finding a way to change pdfs in a reliable way.
We wanted to do one form really well as opposed to multiple forms that were jerky, so the Visa Application was our only form.

## Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a clean looking app that is simple yet extremely effective. The language updates according to what language the user has set on their settings, so it already has the potential to facilitate people being able to apply for visas, jobs, passports, and fill out tax documents.

## What we learned

First, we learned that making a top-notch UI is rather difficult. It is easy to implement a clean looking app, but much more challenging to build next-level animated designs.
Aside from that, we learned that we can make a significant impact on the community in a very short amount of time.

## What's next for Phillinda.space