AssistAnt

Inspiration

The need to stay home and reduce the number of people in public places has become increasingly vital with every passing day. Inspired by the idea of car pools and helpful friends, we came up with the idea for an app to connect two strangers so as to reduce the number of people who have to go out for groceries and medicine by 50%.

What it does

With our primary focus being on high risk groups for whom shopping for necessities during this time is dangerous, this app connects two people - a volunteer and a request based on location. A request can be made in one of the following categories:

Groceries (users specify the items they need)
Prescription (a picture of the prescription is required)
Delivering an item (the item details such as the weight are required)
Other pickup

A volunteer can choose to help in one or more of these categories. Users are matched based on their location and preference, and can contact each other via phone through the app.

How we built it

The app is built using react native and Expo. It is designed to be connected to a back-end which temporarily stores the users as they sign in to receive or offer help. The users are matched on their location and the type of activity they choose. The front-end is designed with ease of use in mind, with focus on making the UI elements easy to read.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first time working with react native and Expo, and the initial set up was challenging. This was also our first time working on an app where the workflows could branch out, and putting them all together was an interesting task.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to design and implement the app fairly quickly. We also added some features that were not initially planned, like camera integration, all in a limited time.

What we learned

We learnt to work with react native components and how the design of components and state management eases the app development as the size of the app grows. We also learnt how close this pandemic has brought people together regardless of social distancing and how help will always be given to those who ask.