Over the past month I've been building a fun side project for the Fixathon called dripdrip! The goal of the fixathon is to build something to raise awareness, take action, or facilate stopping climate change. I had a few ideas for this competition but the one that really got me excited was a tool to help you track your water usage.

Why I'm building it

There are tons of resources online that talk about how global warming has major effects on the water cycle, my favorite being this one. Here's a great quote from this article:

"Global warming is already having a measurable effect on this cycle, altering the amount, distribution, timing, and quality of available water."

So the natural response to this, for me, is to become more aware of the amount of water I use so that way I can cut down on unnecessary usage. Thus dripdrip was born!

How I built it

I decided to take an app approach to this problem. For someone to track their water usage they'll need to have a device on them to track it throughout their day, thus the phone makes the most sense. I built this in React (like eveything else I build), and really took a focus on UX and micro-animations. Of course, it's not all perfect because of the limited timeline but I think for a first pass, it's pretty good.

During the build I kept a dev log on Twitter, which was a lot of fun! Every new feature was documented as I was building it and I was able to get instant feedback from the community! Checkout the thread below 👇

How you can use it

The app is now done and live over at https://dripdrip.app! I would recommend going to it on your phone and then adding the app to your homescreen. You can then start tracking your water usage everyday! Let me know how you do over on Twitter, your results may surprise you!!

In Conclusion

Participating in the Fixathon was a lot of fun! It was nice to take a break from normal side projects and build something that was fresh and also has the potential to make a difference! Thank you so much to the organizers of this, such a great idea and you all excuted it perfectly!