Postay Business Plan

By: Kenza Amira and Wini Lau

Description of the App

Postay is an app designed to help those who can’t leave the house get resources (groceries, toiletries, etc.) through connecting them with nearby volunteers. In design, the app is similar to uber in which it tracks the location of the users and volunteers and matches them. It also provides a shopping list for the users. A more detailed description of the app along with screenshots and examples can be seen in the video.

Impact

During this time of crisis, we realise that there are a lot of people in vulnerable positions, including but not exclusive to the elderly, disabled people, and people with underlying health conditions. In order to help protect these individuals from contracting the virus and risk dying, we came up with this app that is designed to help them get what they need without having to leave their home. If this app is implemented, we are sure that many people from europe and even the rest of the world will benefit from it. It will also bring our community closer together and help us get past this situation with less fatalities.

Why Us (Our position in the actual market)

Allowing local intiatives to have a common platform

Inovative payment strategy:

Wallets on the app, so the Volunteer doesn't pay with their own money (see how to handle payments for more details)

One volunteer but multiple users:

Allowing the Volunteer to help multiple users at a time for a more efficient service. The app therefore creates a common wallet where the blocked amount from all the users is placed. The volunteer will use this wallet to pay or pays with his own empty wallet (allowing a negative amount equal to the calculated total price of groceries) and get reimbursed by the money placed in the common wallet when all the users have received their groceries.

Focused on groceries :

Our focus on groceries makes us able to have a highly functional app. If the supermarkets agree to share their products database and stock, then we will be able to have a better user experience. That is, the user will be able to choose the supermarket and the exact desired product if its in stock. It also allows an exact price calculation in order to block the money in the wallet.

Why not just supermarkets then?

Our app makes it easier to get the groceries you want when you want them but also brings the community together during this crisis

Volunteer needs

We also consider the volunteers' needs. No need to have money to be able to help. The volunteer can also specify when he can go grocery shopping and has access to a chat box to be able to communicate with the assigned users.

Revenue model

It's an early stage to think about this however we wish to keep this app free. But we could generate revenue by adding a mandatory (low) tip to the volunteer where the app would get a very low percentage for offering the platform. The user can then eventually increase the tip if they wish to.

How to handle Payments

As you will see further down, because of the way we want to handle user requests, we would need wallets on the app. So say, you are the user. Then you would have a wallet on the app with the amount of money you decide to put in. When you will do your shopping list. The app will check if the balance in your wallet is enough and it will block it so that you can’t use it. When the volunteer helping you will deliver your groceries, the amount will be transferred to their wallet. That way, we make sure that everyone will get what they need. However, we know some people won’t be able to volunteer because they won’t have the money to pay from their pocket. This is why we thought of another option that would involve banks or eventually supermarkets. Say again you are the volunteer and have your money in your wallet. The app could be a contactless payment app (using your wallet instead of the volunteer’s) only the payment would go through only when you receive your groceries. This is also a risk as there could be theft so we are open to other ideas as both have their downsides. We could allow the volunteer to have a negative balance to a certain limit (say the price of the groceries).

How to handle Shopping Lists

Right now on the app, you can see that the shopping list has only 7 items and an input for the amount. However, in the actual app we wish to get the supermarkets involved. That is we would require some kind of access to their database of products. That way, the user can choose the supermarket they would like to use and also specific products (brands) and put it in their shopping list. This would allow to have a higher accuracy in price and also in whether the product is available or not. It would be nice that if the volunteer can’t find a product (Indicated as in stock but it’s not there), they can contact the user and notify him and then the user would either pick another option or just cancel the product. That action would have an effect on the amount blocked in the wallet as it could alter the price of the shopping. This would also require another GPS feature because the user should only be able to ask for groceries from supermarkets nearby.

How to handle User Requests

Right now, the way the app is built is that a volunteer can only get a request from one User. However, because it is grocery shopping. It would be better to have a higher number of requests for one volunteer. That means that all the users would have a certain amount of money blocked and put in a temporary common walet that the volunteer uses to pay in the supermarket (The volunteer should only be able to pay with that wallet in the supermarket). It would be nice that the User is able to specify when they need the groceries (today or tomorrow for example). That way, a volunteer is only marked as working when they reach the requests limit (say 2 because the number of items available to buy are restricted during the crisis) or when they decide they don’t want another request. How to make the app straightforward This app should be very easy to use as we are focusing on vulnerable groups most of which are elderly. There are multiple ways to do so but we believe we should have a mixture of “e-learning” and a quick step by step. By “e-learning” we mean a short introductory video and also a step by step guide that takes you through all the functionalities and what you need to do. We believe this step by step guide should stay available to users whenever they wish to see it, if they ever forget how to use the app. Obviously, it would be great to have some users test it and rate how straightforward they think the app is and what suggestions they have in order to know what we can focus on (Acceptance Tests).

How to make the app safe

One aspect we need to think about is how to make sure the groceries have been delivered. For that we need to make sure the volunteer only gets the money back when they deliver the groceries. For that we could display a code on the user’s app that the volunteer has to enter in order to prove the groceries have been delivered. It would also be nice to have some information about the user and the volunteer (like ID) to keep the app as safe as possible. We would need assistance from a security expert.

App Design

For now, the app design is very basic but that is because we used those 3 days to fully focus on functionality and delivering an app that works. However, we believe we should keep the design very simple in order to follow the principles of UI design.

User familiarity:

We should use designs that are familiar to the user (e.g use a baskett button to go shopping)

Consistency

Minimal surprise:

Avoid keys that have different effects in different modes

Recoverability:

e.g. Being able to undo

User diversity:

Be able to provide choices for customizability (Different languages, Voice over, color switches for color blind) + follow the legal obligations about accessibility

Improvement

Apart from the few big problems stated above, due to the constraint of time, there are some minor details that we wish we could change as well. Here is a list of features we wish we couldn’t implemented: Allow volunteer to pick up multiple requests within the same area instead of only one Allow user to set a prefer date/time for the grocery delivery Better design aesthetics Build a chat room for volunteers and users (and maybe a forum for community posts) Allow cancellation for both parties

Other Ideas

During the process of planning, we came up with this other project that we also really liked, so we thought we would share it here.

Because of the quarantine, couples or families are forced to stay together for long periods of time causing the drastic increase of domestic violence. So our other idea was to create an app that would help victims of domestic abuse seek help or reach out to others in secret. This app is hidden so that there would not be an icon, but instead opens when the user draws a specific symbol on the screen (designed by the user when downloaded). Inside the app, there are quick commands such as call 911 and call a designated person. There would also be volunteers on the app who the victims can talk to if they decide they don’t want to talk to police or family/friends.