Kiva mobile Application

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Inspiration

Inspiration came through the problem statement stated by kiva with adequate research by comparing each problem statement with our environments. We saw how poverty is increased every day in Africa due to inadequate employment opportunities being provided by the government, high exchange rates which affect the economy, insecurity which leads to loss of homes by citizens due to bandit attacks. Yes, all these are true, they happen in my country. We just related the problem statement with our environments and asked the question "How can we solve this problem of poverty? How can citizens get elevated by an increase in the standard of living?" A lot of questions are being asked here. So we came up with this solution.

What it does

The design provides solutions to the problem statements which we handpicked from the ones stated by kiva. They include:

Borrower reach: This app helps kiva partners to reach more borrowers and it does this by showcasing it on the onboarding screen which lets the goal of the application clear to the users and kiva partners(core functionality). More details on this are on the fund distribution statement, loan impact statement, borrower connections statement, and a few others.
Fundraising: Partners can reach additional funds through this app by getting interests back from borrowers after an agreed period of time. This is done such that, partners also get to set up their accounts like borrowers but in a different way and with more features. A kiva partner page would look like a job application page where users will see partners' profiles, what kind of loans they give (whether agricultural business loans, tech loans, etc), their interests, and the time limit to pay back the loans. Users can then apply to such partner's loan if they fit the criteria, and also chat them up through a real-time messaging functionality.
Fund distribution: Better connections are built with borrowers through this app by the easy distribution of funds which is done by enabling borrowers to easily set up campaigns by asking for loans and state reasons why he/she needs such loans.

-Borrower connections: Better connections can be built with borrowers through this app by building a kiva agent section where Agents(like customer service personnel) would be available to attend to every question that users might need clarification on about the platform. Note: This can also be solved with machine learning by integrating a chatbot that does the work of a customer service agent, but as it's almost a general practice, don't use machine learning unless a task becomes much repetitive and costly. Moreover, adequate data source is needed to train a machine learning model to perform this task. Another functionality on this is that lenders can get to see the profile of their potential borrowers which includes things like campaigns they have raised, business cards, website if any, and other information that could build potential trust between the lenders and borrowers.

Loan impact: The impact of the loans being given out to borrowers is demonstrated in this app by using a kiva card which can be a physical or virtual card that users can use to get or withdraw the money they loaned from kiva agents or partners.
Borrower visibility: This app provides better tools for kiva partners to showcase borrowers and their stories by providing a profile setup functionality after signing up into kiva, which enables users to set up useful details such as first name, last name, and a short bio about his/herself. Kiva partners can then showcase this user information to showcase to other users to see the success stories of their users which can persuade more borrowers to get loans from such partners maybe as a result of reviews they've seen.
Lender engagement: This app helps in providing engaging experiences to Kiva lenders and connecting with new ones through the statements in fundraising and borrowers connections statements.

More details are in the video explanations.

How we built it

The steps we followed while building this includes:

Research phase: We had to use up to 3 weeks or thereabout to do adequate research based on the problem statement we chose to work on, which we did on our own due to non-fast feedback responses from the hack's organizers. We just had to go on with that.
Bring what we found out together through virtual meet-ups: We met virtually to show what we found out and how the designer would go on designing the project.
Implementation: The designer in my team did a great job in designing this functional kiva mobile app which we would implement the code after the hackathon( we didn't do this due to the time factor).

Challenges we ran into

Some challenges we ran into while brainstorming on ideas includes:

A lot of thoughts and contemplation were put into making the application mobile or web design. We solved this by looking at tools that users best interact with, which is a mobile device. So we decided to go on with a mobile design.
How best we would be able to solve or tackle each problem statements we chose to work on. A lot of research was done to solve this.
Issues on making the design at a surface level or in-depth due to the time limitation. We decided to make the design solutions in-depth rather than building something at a surface level and implementing some code that might not really be impressive.
Issue of collaboration due to location barriers. We just had to move on with it.
The most important issue was the time factor. We had limited time to implement it up to the extent of writing the API and mobile application. If the hackathon had been a minimum of three months longer, we would have brought this project to life. A lot of research was put into this project by my team. Nevertheless, we would work on this project even after the hackathon to bring it to life.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Some accomplishments that we are proud of and surely going to implement include:

Building a solution that fits into the kiva brand.
Being able to solve the problem statements we tackled adequately and many more. ## What we learned We learned how to manage each other as a team through a series of brainstorming ideas, by carrying out research, conducting virtual meet-ups, and exploring a problem being faced in so many parts of the world especially in Africa and some other rural places in the world.

What's next for Kiva mobile Application

Well, some useful extensions of the functionalities would include:

A website to make users easily navigate through and know what kiva does with amazing interactions. It's this website that would lead them into downloading the mobile app.
More research would still be done.
Extension into solving some other problem statement stated.