HopIn

Inspiration

The ski trip finally left the group chat. Winter break, we were all locked in. I booked my Amtrak weeks in advance. However, due to "routing issues," the train was 3 hours late and I missed my flight. There HAD to be a better way. Later, my friend mentioned that he was driving back to Chicago that same day and he had spots open in his car. All I could think was "I would've paid for a spot in that car!"

What it does

HopIn is a carpooling app. It lets drivers post about upcoming trips, and it lets riders join trips close to their destination. Drivers can post the starting and ending location, the number of seats open, and can charge a price for each seat. Riders can then view nearby trips and request to join them. When the ride is completed, money is exchanged and reviews are left.

Drivers get compensated for gas and their effort and riders get to their destination economically and on time. Everyone wins.

A large target audience for our app is college students. For example, every break hundreds of cars leave UIUC towards Chicago. A lot of these cars are unfilled. Concurrently, hundreds of students end up buying expensive tickets for the Peoria-Amtrak duopoly. HopIn aims to connect these two groups to everyone's benefit.

For spring break

Peoria - $48 Amtrak - $45 Uber - $215

At $20 per seat, a driver with a typical 4 seater car can cover gas and lunch for a drive she was already going to make! In addition, riders end up paying half the usual cost for a ride back home.

How we built it

We primarily used Django and React Native to build our application. We decided to split up the backend and frontend components into seperate applications so that we can implement multiple interfaces for our app (web, ios, android). In addition, we used the Google Maps API to pull coordinate and location data.

Challenges we ran into

It was our first time using Django, so it took a while to get acclimated the framework
Nobody on our team specialized in frontend, so picking up React on the go was tough

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finishing a MVP!
Creating both web and mobile interfaces

What we learned

We chose to work with frameworks we were unfamiliar with. Although this was hard initially, it payed off in the end. By working on this project, we learned a lot about web development. Specifically, we were able to grasp the basics of frontend development, database design, and the Django paradigm.

What's next for HopIn

There were several features we didn't have time to implement. Here are a few key ones:

Driver/Rider verification: Safety is a huge priority, and in the future we would like to implement background checks
Payment: Currently, users would have to negotiate and settle payments outside the platform. Ideally, payment and escrow should all be done in-app
Price Comparison: Wondering if you're getting a good deal? Compare alternative prices and times in-app
Group booking: Have 2 or more friends looking for a ride? Filter rides with enough seats available and book all at once