Inspiration
"88 percent of youths wish they could do more to help those in need (Harris Interactive). Studies also show that social media can influence the decisions that prettens/teens make regarding their lifestyles. As individuals who fall into this category, we felt that banking has always felt a little scary and a little too serious: that's where "all'round" comes in. A round-up feature is inviting with this new fun interface that ensures ease and security with the very tools we're all accustomed to (i.e. Venmo). As long-time "add-to-my-insta-profile" people, we're always looking to show our support to organizations, especially when they showcase current causes that are close to our hearts; our AI-influenced moldel consider's users' preferences when recommending relevant and personal charities to donate to.
What it does
Our mobile application follows along the Associated Banking pipeline by implementing a rounding-up feature to our app that also strives to be community drive. Upon linking one's Google and bank account, our program will access the user's transactions and offer the ability to round up to a specific interval based on the purchase total; the user then has the opportunity to donate this "round-off amount" to a charity of their choice, which they can decide on through our smart explore page that showcases new, important causes. With our inspiration in mind, we even turned the tables on the popular Spotify extension "Receiptify" by bringing Wrapped to the field of finance!
How we built it
Using Swift and Java/JavaScript/XML for our iOS and Android mobile applications, respectively, our project relied on Python as the main backend with Fast API for functionality and MongoDB as our preliminary method of storage.
Challenges we ran into
From software we were unexposed to as well as the difficulties that often come while working with new ideas (and new people), we found that we were significantly behind time compared to the other teams. A majority of our team faced significant hardware struggles and even lost some of their code while trying to salvage what they had; ultimately, despite our unfamiliarity with Swift and XCode, and the many technical difficulties with rented Macs, a proper divison of responsibilities, consistent communication and compromise, and a drive fostered by this unique opportunity and our mutual respect for each other pushed us to
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We were able to successfully find a way to pull data from banks given a user's information using Plaid, formulate two versions of our mobile app, interact with multiple API's, and all learn software we'd never even touched before. This push out of our comfort zones allowed us to grow individually as programmers as well as team members, as we prioritized organization and strategy.
What we learned
A team of new, different people helped each of us learn a lot, especially in terms of skills that we gained overnight that another member may have been more knowledgable about. Additionally, we learned the true values of front-end development, which none of us came into with much experience.
What's next for All 'Round
This idea was a significant feat of compromise for all of us, combining familiar interests and newfound skillsets; we're all glad to say we'd love to continue developing, polishing, and growing our work.
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