Laundaway

Laundaway App Main Page

Inspiration

As college students we noticed that we and many of our friends struggled with the lack of convenient laundry options. After leaving the dorms, many of us moved to off-campus houses in South Oakland that were far from campus laundry stations and laundromats This became especially frustrating in the winter times with icy sidewalks and exams always fast approaching. Even students who lived in apartment buildings with laundry services struggled with defective machines and apathetic management.

What it does

Laundaway is an Uber-Laundry Service for college students. Students can use an app on their phone (or the website for when their batteries have died and a charger is nowhere to be found) and order a laundry driver to pick up their laundry. Students can wait for their driver to arrive at the door or leave their laundry bags at the front porch. From the app, they have several customization options: load type (whites, colors, heavy stain) wash types (dry clean, cold, warm, hot), dry types (hang dry, delicates, knits, cotton) detergent options (Tide, Downy, etc). The driver then delivers the laundry back to the student's house.

How I built it

Because we are all novice coders with little to no experience, we initially struggled with the implementation of Laundaway. We experimented with Bootstrap templates but ultimately decided to challenge ourselves and build the website from scratch. One of our team members had experience with HTML and built a demo website for Laundaway. We also utilized Nativ, an app maker for those without coding knowledge.

Challenges I ran into

Our progress was initially sporadic. Because we were beginner coders with ambitious ideas, we struggled to define the scope of the project and decide the most efficient and effective way to implement the idea at our experience level.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are proud that we were able to form an idea and put a project together with little coding experience.

What I learned

We gained a lot of knowledge about the resources available to novice coders. As we worked through our project, we also gained problem solving skills and learned some of the basics of coding with HTML.

What's next for Laundaway

In terms of the technology, the next steps would be to develop skills in mobile app development and to enhance HTML and CSS skills to create a more sophisticated website. In terms of business strategy, the next step would be to develop market research to assess and further research the profitability and logistics of creating a laundry service for college students.