BudgeTree

Inspiration

The inspiration comes from mainly personal experiences. Despite the fact that all of us know how important sustainability is for us and future generations, it’s very hard to keep that in mind in a society almost reliant on consumerism. We thought it would be a good idea to keep sustainability in the front of our heads anytime we buy something. Thus, we decided to integrate a budgeting app with an app that tracks the sustainable choices we make.

What it does

Budgeting app that helps you track expenses and savings but geared towards motivating users to make more environmentally conscious purchase decisions in the future. It does this by suggesting sustainable alternatives and providing fun facts after inputting a purchase. The more you make that sustainable purchase in the future, the larger your virtual tree grows as an incentive to continue those sustainable habits. There will also be a donation option to help grow your tree with the money going towards planting trees in the real world.

How we built it

The mobile app design was shown using Figma in the visual demonstration and the online website was made using html and css

Challenges we ran into

Collaboration under pressure and compromising with your teammates. With lots of different opinions and ideas it was difficult to incorporate everyone’s wishes into one product, but it worked out well in the end

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Clean design of the app prototype. The first designs are always the hardest because everyone has a lot of ideas to include, but in the end, our design looks clean and is easy to use.

What we learned

We learned that asking questions is vital to project advancement whether it’s with your teammates or with mentors. For a virtual project that relies so heavily on effective collaboration, it was crucial that everyone was on the same page regarding intentions and decisions made. Since many of us are new to hackathons and project pitching, we also learned that taking the initiative and courage to reach out to SheHacks mentors also helped us push through our project and increase our confidence in each step of development It’s okay for something to not be perfect, especially as a new idea being developed within 36 hours. Html, css, figma

What's next for BudgeTree

First, we aim to introduce Facebook leaderboards where friends can compete to reach their sustainable purchase goals. The addition of competition could be a great motivator for users of the program. Secondly, we plan to build a more comprehensive list of goods and alternatives for users worldwide. We would also like to link the wishlists to personal Amazon wishlists for easy online purchasing access.