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Chop&Change Logo
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Inspiration
As international students, we realised that sometimes it may be hard for us to know whether the stuff we want to buy online is worth buying or not if the store sells it in foreign currency. This inspired us to create an easily accessible online currency converter.
The name Chop & Change is inspired by the informal British expression of changing one’s mind or way of doing something. We hope that through our extension, we will be able to help users finance their money better by making use of the opportunity cost of the exchange rate between currencies.
What it does
Chop & Change helps the user to save their desired products across websites from all around the world and change the product price to their preferred currency. We aim to make the online shopping experience, where possibilities are limitless, less stressful and more efficient by putting everything side-by-side in one basket.
How we built it
We used chrome developer tools to create an extension. It is built with HTML and Javascript with CSS for styling purposes. To convert the currency, we used an exchange rate API - select the input currency from a drop-down list where USD is default and convert to a selected one where GBP is the default. Currently, there are 9 currencies included (globally used ones), and 3 shopping websites are supported: Amazon, Flipkart, and Primark.
Challenges we ran into
Time constraint (could not include a database for storing and retrieving previous values) Getting logos and item names automatically from the website was impossible to implement. Styling issues - an actual design looks a bit different than a prototype design.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Cool thing to be used for whenever we shop (especially useful for international students) Uses 9 different currencies and supports 3 popular shopping websites It can be used to track the budget in your home currency too
What we learned
First time coding an extension - steep learning curve but fun Time management and group work Battle between what the user wants and what we could offer
What's next for Chop and Change
Ahead, we hope that we could develop Chop&Change even further to maximise user’s experience of our extension even further. Especially, in automising the process of adding the products to the extension. We were inspired by Google Translate’s function, which changes the text on a website to another language automatically. Hence, we hope to do the same in the future for the product’s prices; helping business owners to reach more audience and for buyers to have fewer obstacles in shopping.
User Persona:
Lila - Bsc Computing 1st year student at the University of Bath; Hometown: New York; She struggles with amazon shopping as it lets her only use amazon UK website and gets confused with USD and GBP conversion. George - Graduate software developer at XYZ company; Working in the UK on a work visa, sending money to his home country at alternate months. Needs to keep track of his shopping budget in his home currency denominations.
Reference
https://webdevtrick.com/wp-content/uploads/javascript-currency-converter.jpg
Prototype
https://www.figma.com/file/ozEphinMMRrFis859dyzOE/WACKATHON-TEAM-4?node-id=0%3A1
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