CouchTraveller

Inspiration

We believe that uncoupling of physical spaces from business revenues through digitization allows for a more resilient, scalable and equal opportunity economy for everyone. That is why we created a solution to bring new business opportunities to millions of people. CouchTraveller digitizes some of the most vulnerable sectors of the economy now – travel, cultural sites (museums, galleries, etc.) and education, creating a platform to continue aspects of the business and operations, made impossible by the COVID-19 outbreak and also allowing for new possibilities for previously untapped economic models for the most impacted businesses and providing new equal job opportunities to millions of people impacted by the crisis, including people with disabilities, in sectors that have high demand, but no real solutions so far. All that is achieved without compromise to personal data and individual freedom with a solution that does not require mass adoption to have a positive impact.

Textual Pitch Submission on Devpost Composed of 7 questions that you should prepare in advance before submitting to DevPost:

What it does

• The problem your project solves o Many industries and institutions rely on physical location availability to ensure operational and business continuity. They are hit the hardest. They include the key industries of the most affected EU countries by the crisis. We offer not just a solution to the immediate problem, but a new business model, allowing for new opportunities for individuals and businesses.

How we built it

• The solution you bring to the table o By leveraging ready, mature and scalable technologies (Google Maps API, WebRTC), evolving and improving over time, and building on top of them, the solution allows for its impact to scale as much as needed and make a difference to the life of potentially millions of people, regardless of location or physical condition, stranded by or suffering the economic effects of the crisis, as well as businesses that are in hard times. On the other hand our solution does not require certain scale of adoption to bring positive impact to the users and businesses as a whole and has applications, far beyond the current crisis.

Challenges we ran into

• What you have done during the weekend o Almost everything. Refining the idea and technical solution was done on 24th of April - Friday night (we had the rough idea, while talking with the team members over the week). All development, testing, fixes and roll out of the prototype was completed over the weekend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• The solution’s impact to the crisis o Some of the most impacted countries by the crisis are the EU countries with the leading tourist industries in the world. We offer an immediate solution to alleviate some of the impact on the hardest hit businesses in the most affected countries.

• The necessities in order to continue the project o We see multiple ways to build on the project. Since the solution is built over a weekend it must be made stable and tested thoroughly. As next steps we want to add platforms, such as Google Earth VR (https://arvr.google.com/earth/), offering an experience of a virtual tour, that cannot be equaled by a real tour. We might need some additional budget for that, estimated for up to 70K Eur, which will also facilitate adding payment integration and the ability for users to create payed tours for indoor attractions directly (museums, galleries, etc.), thus making more accessible economic possibilities for people and businesses, affected by the crisis (currently it is possible for guides to send private links on paying customers, but it is harder to manage)

What we learned

• The value of your solution(s) after the crisis o The solution is of even more impact, after the crisis, since it gives the ability of travel agencies (promotional tours, payed tours), museums (payed admissions to potentially millions of visitors, regardless of location), galleries (events, payed visits, etc.) and businesses to advertise their offerings in terms of services and products on equal footing, with much bigger players, regardless of geographical location. It can open up a new job market for people of any location to offer services over the platform.

What's next for CouchTraveller

Business Plan It is essential to consider the feasibility, economic and societal value, market knowledge and sustainability of the solution. What resources are needed to implement the solution?

The proposed application CouchTraveller provides a digital, remote way of guided visit of any place of interest around the World It uses the latest technology for development of such type of application, more precisely ASP.NET Core, Google API, Angular , WebRTC, SignalR, Redis

The CouchTraveller covers the most affected by the pandemic of COVID – 19 market environments – all cultural centers, places of interest around the world, travel possibilities. There are not many competitive solutions applicable for mobile, tablet, portable and desk top platforms offering the same features. The targeted Industry is the tourism as whole, but not only. All kind cultural events could be also covered. There are no substantial critical risk factors neither on technological nor on business side The economic value is essential, considering the lower price of the digital guided tour in comparison with the physical one. The social value is even bigger and may be most important now a days, when the social isolation caused by the pandemic COVID 19, causes many psychological problems to the people. The possibility in such moment to be part of guided tour on some famous place can increase the spirit of the people and help them to overcome the isolation difficulties that they face now.

The resources needed for implementation of the solutions are as follows: Agile team of 8 people • Product owner – 25 % • Scrum master – 25% • Back end developers – 4 • Front end (UI) developers – 2 • Web rtc developer – 1 They need 1 sprint of 2 weeks (10 working days). As a total 75 man/ days As a conclusion, the proposed product can reduce dramatically the losses in the tourism caused by the pandemic of COVID – 19 and similar in the future, saving the workplaces mainly of the tourism guiders.

o Long demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRmO34nQ09g

Built With

• angular.js
• asp.net-core
• google
• signalr
• webrtc