NextBid

NextBid makes buying and selling seamless. Snap a photo to list—our AI names it, sets the price, and gets it to buyers. Bid, favorite, and track easily, with instant updates when your item sells.

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Inspiration

Taking inspiration from captivating short-form video content and apps like Tinder, we wanted to find a way to take the outdated process of an auction system and elevate it to focus on streamlining the buyer-seller dynamic while making it more fun and engaging.

What it does

NextBid makes bidding as effortless as swiping. With a Tinder-like interface buyers can swipe right to bid on an item, left to skip, favourite what catches their eye, and let our AI algorithm curate their next must-have item. For sellers, all you need to do is snap a picture of what you want to sell and NextBid will instantly identify it, name it, and recommend a base price for the object. Sellers are secured, get real-time notifications when their items sell, keeping the process stress-free. NextBid makes the auction process fast, simple, and exciting.

How we built it

A responsive frontend built with Next.js and styled using Tailwind CSS, ensuring a seamless user experience across mobile devices and desktops. The mobile-first design, combined with server-side rendering, ensures fast load times and an intuitive interface that adapts to various screen sizes, enhancing accessibility and performance. The backend is powered by a Node.js server, which communicates with both the front-end and essential libraries. It handles user authentication using tools like Clerk. A SQLite database, managed with Prisma ORM, ensures efficient data storage. Core functionality, such as AI-powered tag generation and auction management, is seamlessly integrated into the platform.

Challenges we ran into

Had to learn SQL from scratch and spent time researching how to optimize and integrate the most efficient database system for our application. Started using MySQL but had to pivot to SQLite to ensure we had the time to implement the UX features that are essential to our project and end goal. Another challenge we faced was deciding the functionalities our program would include in the time we had. By putting ourselves in the user's perspective, we focused on prioritizing what we believed to be the most compelling and essential features to deliver a meaningful experience.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a diverse team of 4 first-year Queen’s students, two from Computer Science, one from Commerce, and one from Engineering, we are incredibly proud of what we have accomplished in just 2 days at QHacks. Coming from different programs, we each brought a unique set of skills and were all able to contribute and collaborate to create a project that was tailored for the greatest user experience and function. This project challenged us to think outside the box, problem-solve, find common ground in our passion, and we are incredibly proud of what we achieved as a team.

What we learned

Through this project, our team developed skills in JavaScript, HTML, CSS, React, Next.js, Node.js, SQL, Tailwind, and OpenAI. We leveraged AWS and Clerk for backend support and user authentication. We learned how to integrate AI effectively, design UX/UI, backend development, and how to deliver an impactful pitch. Creating a user-friendly interface and implementing these features gave us a very valuable hands-on experience. We also learned soft skills like how to work collaboratively in a group, have meaningful discussions, overcome challenges, and be adaptive. We learned to break challenges into manageable tasks and always remember that we are working towards a common goal.

What's next for Next Bid

NextBid’s next steps involve implementing more features to heighten the user experience. To begin, the timer feature can be expanded to support longer and shorter auction periods from minutes to several days or weeks. This can benefit the seller by increasing demand in a time constraint or gain longer visibility for their listings. In addition, an interest quiz at sign-up could be introduced, along with preferences the user is able to edit, as well as seller ratings with verified purchase counts to increase credibility.

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