#5: Team Green Tea - CounterOffer

Inspiration

Most students and professionals often don't feel confident negotiating. This happens because there are few opportunities to practice negotiation skills. As a team composed of a high school student, two college students, and one graduate student, we noticed how a platform like CounterOffer could impact current students and professionals and promote financial wellness that would perpetuate beyond retirement.

What it does

CounterOffer is a platform that provides video chats where two people can be paired together to practice negotiation. Each simulation is a game where each participant has a role and is given a certain amount of money. The context given in each case is tailored to educate the participants about possible arguments regarding benefits, salary, and stipends the employee could ask for. At the end of each round, they must reach an agreement and submit the amount to the employer (often represented by a hiring manager) decided to give to the employee. The money earned during the games represents the player's points on the platform, and a machine learning model would be used to show how well other users did and compare the techniques they used. As the user plays our simulations, they will become more confident with their negotiation skills and more aware of the benefits they could potentially ask for.

How we built it

The backend was built utilizing Node.js, Express.js, Python, and Django framework, whereas the frontend was developed with Axios, React, React-bootstrap, and CSS. We utilized Twilio for the video chat, and we employed Google Forms and Spreadsheets for the surveys to collect data.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest issue we ran into was integrating the frontend and backend, as some errors were raised while we merged them. We also developed new technical skills and found new tools to solve our issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the proactivity of the team members as we developed this project, as well as the new skills acquired through this experience.

What we learned

We learned a lot of frontend and backend skills, as well as the importance of proactivity and collaboration. The team members had different backgrounds coming in, but each of us is leaving this Hackathon having learned new skill sets. For example, Twilio was new to us but we were able to run it after less than 1 hour.