Kensim

Introduction

This project was submitted to Strathmore University on July of 2018 as part of the evaluation for Human Computer Interaction. The contributors fof this project were: Anastasia Macharia, Caroline Kamau and Miller Adulu

This HCI project was intended to improve the user experience for Kensim. Kensim is a real estate website for an agency that is supposed to enable them showcase their properties for interested clients. As of the time the project commenced Kensim the experience on Kensim was like this.

Areas addressed

1. Getting the search to work in a robust manner using the Algolia search engine
2. Improving the UI to be adaptable to mobile
3. Improving the process of adding properties to the listings on the backend

Setup

1. Clone the project
2. Rename the .env.example file to .env
3. Run composer install in the directory. If you get errors, ensure to check that the required php extensions are installed and enabled on your server.
4. Run php artisan key:generate in the directory to set the APP_KEY used by Laravel
5. Setup an algolia account and copy the application id and secret into the .env file that allow upload of models (The admin id). Configure the remaining options based on the documentation.
6. Setup a Google Maps API and copy the API key into the .env file and set the central latitude and longitude appropriately.
7. Upload the sample database provided to your server and set the database variables accordingly.
8. Setup a Laravel Voyager instance using these instructions.
9. Run php artisan eyewitness:install to setup Eyewitness.io to help view the application status.
10. Run php artisan serve to launch the application.
11. On the Laravel Voyager admin panel, add a few properties and pictures.
12. On a separate terminal opened in the same folder, run php artisan scout:import "App\Property" to index the added properties so that they are available for searching.
13. Close the second terminal and search away. 🎉