Inspiration

Finding housing is the most difficult when you are located internationally. We as international students understand the pain of finding reliable contacts of managers who we can trust with the deposit money and the legitimacy of the housing. The problems that students face:

Payments before landing in USA -Housing managers generally want students who can pay even before they land in the USA, which is on the student's side, can be phishy.
FRAUD RISK - The percentage of students landing into fraud because of unreliable and scattered information on the web for student housing poses a lot of insecurity and anxiety to international students.
SCATTERED INFORMATION - Different house owners use different platforms to post ads making it difficult for the students to maintain track.
UNRELIABLE PAYMENT GATEWAY - Property managers ask payments in USD and students pay through various ways (forex, credit, debit, IMPS) which pose a threat because of lack of payment status. Did it reach?
LACK OF CURRENT STATUS OF THE PROPERTY - How many units are available, which unit can be leased? Property managers generally do not update their ads and rarely provide information about availability.
CANNOT REACH MANAGERS THROUGH CALL OR TEXT - International calls are very expensive. GHOSTED ON EMAILS ……. And the list can go on and on………

We thought of an idea that can serve as a one stop platform for secure payments, reliable house listings, trustable tenant feedback, easy communication and near to real house tours for immersive user experience using Virtual Reality.

This platform is immersive, reliable, and adds a sense of trustability both for students and for property managers with authentications and verification before signing up.

We aim to provide reachable (virtually tourable through VR) and credible (reliable payment assured, ID verified) student rental housing options for newly admitted international/out of state students.

What it does

Simplified and trustable LEASING for both students and property owners.

Kaizen allows: Students:

To sign up on the website and check house listings.
Provide virtual reality enabled house tours, along with video and pictures for 2D capabilities.
To contact property managers directly from the website to make calls, text or book appointments hence reducing the stress about international calling and manager availability.
To check insights about property, a data analytics capability, from fetching the number of clicks a user does on a particular property and percentages of users reaching to the leasing portion from first sign up.
Get details about properties - proximity to grocery stores, proximity to campus, neighborhood, pricing, availability, managers contact, amenities, area details, property features, property stars.
To make payments, which first goes to Kaizen and from Kaizen to property managers, hence reducing the fraud probability.
Sign lease agreements, pay deposits and rents.

Property Managers:

Provide legitimate students who signed up using JUST SCHOOL ID hence reducing the time and cost in catering to a non-interested audience.
Get payments from international students easily.
Send BLOCKCHAIN based lease agreements.
Have virtual reality based house tours of their properties made by Kaizen team.

Unique Selling Point:

Secure payment gateway - Multiple payment options (different currencies, crypto, cards)
All the available housing options at one platform.
Virtual reality tours
Verified users (students: SCHOOL ID ONLY verification and managers: only KAIZEN team can put the listing after checking the legitimacy of the property through legal papers).
REDUCED HUMAN BIAS - Manual feedback or survey less, data based insights about properties.
Current status of the property - Providing number of available properties by tracking the lease signed on the platform.

How I built it

We used HTML, CSS, A-FRAME, and Python as our programming language. Virtual Reality capabilities are achieved using A-FRAME. And we incoporated most of the sponsors for the event:

TWILIO SIP API - Texts and messaging over VoIP using Twilio SIP API.
CockroachDB to save the student data, and present insights.
Auth0 for user sign up and authentication.
Payment gateway.
Exclusive VR tours and reliable listings for paid users, using Coil.
Blockchain enabled lease agreement sign, using SMART KEYS and Digital Signatures using DeSO.

Challenges I ran into

We had problems in stitching the parts of our codes together into one application. None of us had experience in CockroachDB but with constant efforts the DB was set and linked to Auth0. Virtual reality enabling on the website was something everybody was excited about but nobody knew how to do it with. Learning A-FRAME and implementing VR, was extremely tough. None of us know how to build it all, but the courage to take on this challenging project and daring to build it in a day, taught us, teamwork is the key.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

The proudest accomplishment would probably be the idea of the app, we know there are several websites catering housing, but we stand out because of Virtual reality, payment gateway, student verification, and trustable listings. Certain features we are proud of:

Solving the biggest problem of international calling and text, using Twilio.
Virtual Reality tours.
Secure Payment gateway.
Blockchain encrypted key based lease agreeements.

It is one step closer to helping the students and impacting their journey in a foreign land.

What I learned

We learned that no matter how many languages we know collectively, getting exposed and used to new software is always a challenge. But we also learned to adapt - when we ran into problems with software that seemed to be glitching, we would move onto another part and continue working just so we wouldn't fall behind too much. Coding can be entertaining and fun as a group effort - having so many brains work together made the process faster. Brainstorming enables a different world of questions which makes the application better. That being said, people's coding styles really are different, and we now understand why most companies require a uniform coding style.

What's next for Kaizen

In the future, we'd like to implement a feature that allows students to post advertisements of furniture they want to sell, and will show them to a potential student user on the website. This will have Augmented reality capabilities, hence, user can place the furniture in real world using their phone camera or can put them in the property VR that’s listed on the website to show the final dynamics of their apartment when furnished. greener planet. Also, the VR will include aerial view of the city showing the safe areas and unsafe areas around campus, in terms of USC, DPS Zone in 3D map. We'd also like to help users find a roommate using machine learning recommendation, recommending students who are looking for similar properties or have similar interests.