Inspiration
The ability for Internet platforms to reach down to the individual level has enabled new forms of sharing economies, both paid and free. Traditional libraries have embraced a role where they lend items for the community's benefit. In Philadelphia, the Paschalville branch library has begun a program to lend ties to jobseekers. https://americanlibrariesmagazine.org/2016/09/01/tiebrary-community-ties/ Fashare aims to expand this program to all types of garments, make it vastly more accessible through an Internet service, and expand availability beyond individual regions.
What it does
Fashare is an online sharing market where individuals can borrow and lend clothes. Ideally, a visitor will snap a photo of the garment and upload it to our website. Then, someone looking to borrow clothes will search through the listings and find something that suits their needs. Fashare connects people to outfits around the world.
How we built it
In order to create an effective sharing market, we decided to create a website. For the frontend, we used HTML, CSS and Javascript. For the backend, we decided to use Ruby on Rails. The technologies here were chosen because of the need to integrate both the frontend Javascript and the backed SQL database.
Challenges we ran into
Our main challenge was to decide on a reasonable set of features for the given time limit. We had to pivot from our initially ambitious plan to create a more minimal product. Our team was split between the aesthetics and the functionality of the website. Our backend did not have much experience with good page layout and this project was the first time our frontend worked in a Ruby on Rails framework.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
For Fashare, we needed to make an application that both sufficiently fulfilled the main goals of the website and gave individuals a pleasant user experience. We are proud to say that we were successful in making a clean, functioning website from scratch in under 36 hours.
What we learned
Throughout Fashare’s creation, we learned to utilize each member’s unique skill sets to maximize each member’s contribution. This translated to working on the back end in developing a database, working on the front end for user interface, or improving page designs through dialogue. In the end, we learned from each other’s strengths while contributing our own.
What's next for Fashare
Fashare is only a prototype, but a future release will include many features that we did not have time to implement. For example, we will integrate Fashare with Google Maps to provide location-based recommendations. We will also need to choose an online marketplace platform, such as Shopify, to help our users arrange payments. Since university campuses typically have existing "Free and For Sale" groups, we are looking to have our initial launch in that type of ecosystem.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.