Inspiration
Sustainability is no small problem to tackle. We believe in everyday people taking small steps to each play our part, and bring-your-own-cup initiatives across coffee and beverage stores is a classic example. However, in examining such a strategy more closely, we realised that despite being an undeniably significant step to take, many businesses aren't taking the leap. A more attractive way to incorporate reusable cups for stores had to be possible.
Initially, our team wanted to build exciting apps that could bring about big, transformative strategies to create a positive, sustainable impact. Unsure how realistic and cost-efficient such strategies would be for local businesses, we decided to focus on optimising current strategies through new methods.
What it does
EcoPoints is a digital loyalty program that gives business a way of promoting sustainability without compromising profit, all whilst continuing to foster long-term relations between store and customer in a familiar device: loyalty programs. Customers are incentivised to 'whip' out reusable cups and present their personal QR code to the merchant, 'sip' their drinks,' and 'drip' in the rewards once merchants have scanned the QR to confirm a reusable cup was brought in for a drink.
How we built it
The initial UI design was created in Figma, and the app prototype is built with React Native and Expo.
Challenges we ran into
We ran into challenges navigating the new software, as we experimented with Figma and GitHub. Attending the workshops and keeping an open channel of communication helped us get through such issues.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of managing to pull through and complete the hackathon with ongoing communication, as most team members were not able to meet in-person.
What we learned
We learnt to really play to each other's strengths. We had team members from various areas of study with various skills, which not only meant that pieces of the project were best allocated to certain people, but we had really different viewpoints and opinions that added to discussion.
What's next for EcoPoints
We're looking to further develop the app prototype to integrate account creation pages for both customer and store, as well as build and deploy a back-end. Small features are also being mapped out, such as gamified store discovery and sustainability progress trackers.
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