Mutual Aid App

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  Splash page - Onboarding

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  Events Page

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  Explore Page

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  Discussions Page

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  Profile Page

Inspiration

The inspiration for this project comes from a very deep place in my heart. This app will help people in underserved communities like my own, and if developed, would help my family. I grew up in a poor neighborhood which was subsequently a tightly knit community. There would always be food drives, clothing drives, toy drives, you name it. The only thing was that it was difficult to find these events unless you knew someone who knew about it or you just happened to see a flyer somewhere while walking by. Having a place to view all of these sorts of events could genuinely save some lives and help ease the burdens of some families. While working on this project I discovered that my neighborhood actually does in fact have a mutual aid organization. The only issue is that seemingly no one knows about it, not even my mom who's lived there for over 40 years. The website is old, never updated, and abandoned. If only people in communities knew about mutual aid and how to keep it alive!

What it does

The app has four pages for users to navigate: events, explore, discussions, and profile.

• On the events page, users can see nearby events like fundraisers, clothing drives, community clean-ups, town hall meetings, etc. and can RSVP to the event as an attendee or volunteer.
• The explore page will have a built-in map where users can see issues within their community like potholes that need to be filled, or even events that are being held. Each type of event or issue etc will show up on the map as its specified icon (hazard icon, meeting icon, food icon, clothing icon, etc.). Users can filter their explore page map by type of event, they can search the name of a community or kind of event, kind of hazard, etc.
• The Discussions page is sort of like a forum, people can post questions, prompt discussions amongst the members of their community or nearby communities, plan events and talk about things they can do to fix issues within the community, and so much more.
• Users can customize their profile, disclose their status (community member, volunteer, etc.), and add friends

How we built it

I built this entire project in Figma since it is my first hackathon ever and I am working alone

Challenges we ran into

• Rushed and did not have enough time for iterations, wireframes, or low-fidelity prototypes.
• Spent a lot of time on brainstorming and was stumped for a bit trying to decide what pages should or shouldn't be in the app
• Fatigue
• Sometimes the prototype would glitch or some items would not shoe up in the clickable prototype, fixed this by ensuring that all items were placed in the frame correctly

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Prototype is clickable and you can get a general feel for what the actual app would look and function like
• Prototype is mostly complete
• Design is clean and aesthetically pleasing
• Design is accessible and accounts for users with visual or auditory impairments

What we learned

• There genuinely is a desperate need for awareness about mutual aid organizations
• There are some nice shortcuts in Figma
• Prototyping gets easier the more you practice it

What's next for Mutual Aid App

• My fiance is a part of a group of activists who are working on starting a mutual aid organization for Staten Island and I plan on working on this prototype a bit more, then pitching it to them. They could definitely use an app to organize all of their meetings and such. Starting small is a good idea and with iterative improvements, the app could be utilized by other marginalized communities!

Built With

• figma