Inspiration 🌌
Businesses are constantly on the hunt for fresh, innovative ways to deliver exclusive offers to consumers. That’s where our Digital Coupon Finder comes in! Fueled by our passion for crafting next-level digital products, we want to reimagine how businesses can connect with customers. With the power of the Google Maps API, we're helping shape the future of digital shopping—making it effortless for local businesses to captivate, engage, and redefine the shopping experience.
What it does 🏙️
Using the Google Maps API, our product allows businesses to offer local and exclusive digital coupons. Users are encouraged to search and explore locations where they collect coupons getting them exclusive deals at their favorite restaurants, shops and experiences. Whether your planning a special event or a date night, the digital coupon finder let's users collect different types of coupons connecting them with exclusive offers. Past place history can be seen on the left side of the screen, and coupon information will be displayed on the right side, when a user clicks a coupon icon.
How we built it 🛠️
With the addition of the Google Maps API using the new beta feature Places, we were able provide unique features to our website. We used JavaScript with the React framework to provide modular components and stylization to each part of our project.
We used Figma for early design prototyping and asset creation, building out a modern looking frontend environment inspired by Google's design language.
Challenges we ran into 💥
One challenge we had was making the places icon clickable. At first we were trying to add an event listener to the marker so it could be clicked on, although that was not provided for the generic 3d marker. We then figured out that the API provided a dynamic marker and could then click on that one. Lastly we experimented with putting 3d models into the map, although we did not get a chance to fully flesh it out, we still added some simple models to the map.
Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏆
Some things we are proud of include the frontend user interface offering a sleek modern look pairing it to work dynamically with the Google Maps framework offering an intuitive design. We are also excited in showing the potential of digital coupons in the future of consumer experiences.
For example, when searching for a place, we dynamically update the recently visited area, as well as display the information of the digital coupons offered by the selected business when clicked on in the map.
What we learned 🧠
Through this project, we gained valuable insights into integrating the Google Maps API, particularly leveraging its new beta Places feature to enhance user interactivity. We learned how to overcome technical challenges like making markers clickable and dynamically displaying relevant deal information.
Additionally, the project improved our skills in React development, modular component design, frontend & backend development and user-focused UI/UX implementation.
What's next for Digital Coupon Finder 🎫
Our next steps include refining the user experience by fully implementing custom 3D models into the map for a more immersive visual representation of the digital coupons. We also aim to expand our search functionality to include personalized recommendations based on user preferences and develop the coupon book and personalization features for both users and businesses.
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