Home Away

Inspiration

Acquaintances of ours currently studying overseas have talked to us about the issues that they are currently facing as Singaporeans in a foreign country. We have also read through online posts detailing the struggles of overseas Singaporeans. Many describe that they feel homesick and find making friends overwhelming due to the cultural barriers and lack of community.

What it does

Bring a slice of Singapore overseas with you and find your home away from home. Home Away tackles the loneliness and lack of community that Singaporeans face abroad. It serves as a platform for Singaporeans overseas to interact with other Singaporeans through forums and sub-groups in the platform and keep up on current events in Singapore through the different news sections and the forums, which have been categorised into a few topics of discussion to ensure an easy to use interface.

How we built it

We built the wireframes using Figma to model the layout of our final app.

Challenges we ran into

We initially wanted to create the application itself. Taking time constraints into consideration, we decided to focus solely on the design of the wireframes for our prototype.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We feel that our app can effectively tackle the pain points that Singaporeans overseas face in finding a community, which are the disorganisation, lack of space for discussion, and a lack of discoverability of existing methods.

What we learned

We were able to better sympathise with the struggles that our target audience is facing. The prospect of living overseas is an enticing one for many people, but researching the problems that our target audience faces allowed us to gain a new perspective on the struggles of living overseas.

What's next for Home Away

Greater integration across government applications and services, collaboration with the Singaporean embassies overseas, as well as the integration of a job portal in the app that not just helps overseas Singaporeans socially, but also career-wise.