Capital Two

Inspiration

We really wanted to make tackle financial literacy, but we slowly started to realize, nobody likes talking about their financial situations. It's a taboo subject and getting advice from friends, family, or people you know is always some level of problematic. So, we started to think: How can we get people talking about personal finance in a way they feel comfortable and they can actually learn to improve their situation?

What it does

An anonymous platform would help users talk about their own personal stories without worrying about scrutiny or embarrassment. We developed systems to create that anonymous environment, so for example, names aren't displayed on any user's posts - but instead randomly generated usernames. The main use of the app goes as follows:

• a user uploads a story anonymously.
• other users can see their post in their feed, in which case, they swipe left or right on each post. Swiping right means they approve of the actions or sentiment in the post, swiping left means they disapprove.
• Comments can also be made to give further context or advice to the original poster.
• The original poster can see their collective feedback on their profile. The comments, the amount of likes and dislikes, and other important information is collected.

How we built it

The project was built with Next.JS, Tailwind, TypeScript, and a PostgreSQL database. We spent a lot of time making functioning systems, such that people can actually create an account, make posts, see other's posts, and use the app from end to end.

Challenges we ran into

It was really tough working with TypeScript, since it requires a lot of thought into how you pass around data and construct your functions. However, we powered through learning a lot about what the purpose of typescript was and when / where it might be useful. For future projects, we're going to take advantage of typescripts in a more beneficial way, instead of trying to just jump over it whenever it creates a problem.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Firstly, we are immensely proud of our new approach in regards to how we talk about finances. This was our main motivation in pursuing this project and hopefully be one step closer to have a common ground of people being comfortable talking about finances and to be more financially-aware of not only yourself but others. During the planning phase, we spent many hours considering of an idea and came up with Capital Two. Even though it was just the start and with an arguably humorous approach, this was our first accomplishment. During the technical implementation, we are very happy of our teamwork throughout the project and with our great communication, we were able to overcome many roadblocks. In the near end, we had some extra time to further polish the project which was fantastic as our time management was well-structured. Overall, some accomplishments may seem small and others may seem big but together, we are very proud to present a working solution to this taboo.

What we learned

We learned a lot about TypeScript and incorporating the design and frontend. We didn't have much experience in designing frontends, but we knew we wanted to incorporate the Capital One branding. We used Figma and tried to polish up the details wherever we could. We're really proud of how it looked in the end.

What's next for Capital Two

There are many ways that we can continue this project but we definitely are planning to make and add more features that will further push the goal of the project. We want to enhance the education-finance aspect of the app, which means connecting people to others who are accredited in financial advice. We can do this by ranking users who give good feedback (based on their comments). Another feature we plan on adding is direct connection with your preferred bank(s) so your financial statements will transfer over to our platform. This will make it will be easier to compare and contrast finances from other people and gain knowledge from one another.

Built With

• figma
• nextjs
• postgresql
• tailwind
• typescript