Next Act

www.nextactcovid19.com homepage
Example task sent when a user signs up

What it Next Act

Next Act is a texting platform that gives you a fun/simple task to do within 12 hours. You can either do the task (which is randomly selected from a tasks we created) or donate to the Red Cross which is helping the fight against COVID-19. After the task, you can nominate your friends to take on the challenge.

Inspiration

We understand social distancing is hard. Many people feel lonely, bored, and sad. We wanted to change that by giving people something to do while making them feel better about the current situation.

We believe that the best way to improve your own life is to improve the lives of others around you. The tasks we created are aimed at doing just that. We were inspired by the ALS ice bucket challenge and other challenges that have gone viral.

How I built it

Nick created the React front end while Chirag focused on the backend architecture. We worked together on creating the AWS lambda functions which sends texts, parses user responses, and updates the database accordingly.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the texting platform set up with Twilio inside of AWS lambda. Choosing the best/leanest database schema Deciding which features were MVP vs necessary (for example, we decided to leave out phone number validation since Twilio can handle invalid numbers)

Accomplishments that we’re proud of

The tasks we created are things people would actually do. We made Next Act because we believe it’s something people will actually use and get value out of.