Facilinate: Donation, enhanced.

GIF
the chat bot option in facilinate (javascript, python)
the prototyping process for facilinate including thinking of the best UI and color scheme.
Testing facilinate
Logo

Inspiration

a deterrent to donating can be lack of advertised opportunities nearby. When looking at the case of college students in a metropolis (Miami) like me, or even donation centers located within or nearby college towns, college campuses can and should be an opportunity for collaboration and visibility between potential donors (students, faculty, staff) and centers especially in crucial times where donation centers could benefit, such as college move out weeks, where students are clearing out shelves and discarding unwanted items, yet many may not know how and where to donate their things. Simply put, Facilinate aims to provide students greater motivation to donate.

Furthermore, the environmental degradation that discarding unneeded items rather than donating secondhand clothing that could be reused or discarding canned items just because they have not been opened yet could be greatly minimized by giving more visiblity to donation centers and donation opportunities that could be lost. Facilinate hopes to address this.

What it does

The main goal of facilinate is to address the lack of visibility donation centers may have, which is is an issue which affect both centers needing donations, and potential donors themselves through personalized donation recommendations based on location and any goods a user is willing to donate. Visuals/UI a welcoming use of features, with designs I created using procreate! First, a user enters their zip code (5 digits, please! :)- as of now, the default region I set is miami-dade, so preferably a zip code such as 33194) and any potential product they hope to donate (eg. toiletries) Then, the user will be redirected to the main page, where a chat bot I coded using javascript and python helps introduce the user to different donation centers nearby (in my case, I set most zip code options to my area- miami-dade- so, for example, if a user types the word "donate": they will be guided to an option where they can either type 1. food 2. blankets or 3. hygiene- each option pulls up an embed map of a donation center nearby (eg. a food bank, a goodwill) with the address of the center included.

How I built it

for greater context, I decided to conduct polling, through the form of three questions centered around whether the student ever was considering donation, how accessibility (or lack thereof) to nearby donation resources or opportunities may have stopped the student from donating unneeded items, and the student's main form(s) of researching about donation opportunities.

»Theme 1: initial willingness to donate over 90% of polled students said they intended to donate things they did not need »however, over 83% of students said that they felt less willing to donate after unsuccessful donation searches

Theme 2: internet searches dominate »over 85% of students polled said they used the internet as their primary form of searching for potential donation opportunities

Theme 3: minimal resources to realistically donate »over 70% of students polled voiced frustrations with not being able to find donation opportunities within the surrounding area through an internet search

»students want to find an easier, more reliable way to donate without having to rely on outdated websites or donation centers that were too far away, especially during the stress of needing to move out while having excessive clutter

Challenges I ran into

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Definitely the chat portion of the main landing page was my proudest accomplishment. It was difficult but rewarding and helped provide a greater interactive element to facilinate.

What's next for Facilinate: Donation, enhanced.

I hope to implement:

forums which could offer the ability to create either a private messaging thread or open/public thread which can be filtered by college, town, or area.

This can provide students the opportunity to potentially connect with other students around the area all while finding the best-fitting opportunities to donate (students can clear out their shelves and facilitate the move out process along the way) while potentially meeting new people with similar interests or goals.

the ability to filter by location and preferred donation materials while keeping in mind that busy college students may not want to be notified all the time of new opportunities, with the ability to select whether they would like to be notified, which sorts of notifications they would like (recommended donation centers, messages) as well as notification timeframes (which can be set to daily, weekly, monthly, and/or end of semester, moving out notification periods)