Orbit: Classifieds for Students

Craigslist for students with more relevant posts. No more cluttered FB groups. We have rewards in-app purchase.

Comment

Inspiration

We noticed that our schools had tons of random Facebook groups for carpool, textbook exchange, selling items, events, student housing (sublet), tutoring, etc.

We decided to build an android app to replace cluttered Facebook groups and have one central location where users can view all "postings" in "boards (groups)" of interest.

What it does

Allows users to post "classifieds" into "boards" which other users can view and comment on, as well as contact the poster for more details.

Better than having a million Facebook groups because...

  • One unified group for each board “i.e. at Waterloo we have 3-4 different semi-active rideshare groups”
  • Old posts are deleted (after 1 week), just active and relevant content will be shown to the user (no searching or filtering to get relevant results)
  • No spam (postings to boards must be in a specific format), users can post a maximum of 5 posts per board (can be increased with "trophies - perks" or upgrading to a premium account.
  • Lightweight, streamlined, and distraction free

Better than using Craigslist or Kijiji because...

  • Posting boards relevant to just students (i.e. no legal, lawn care, and other boring things)
  • Gamification aspect, users can earn points, get awards & perks, and compete with friends
  • Better user experience for students
  • All users are students (must sign up with a school e-mail)

How we built it

Design done in Sketch, Adobe Photoshop & Illustrator. Proto done in Invision. App developed in Android Studio using Java and XML.

Challenges we ran into

We had just 1 programmer who did most of the back-end, we ran out of time and couldn't implement all the features we wanted to.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Polished UI, and reliable backend with user authentication, login servers, posting, viewing, and commenting.

What we learned

We needed a more balanced team.

What's next for Orbit: Classifieds for Students

  • Pull posts from Facebook and sort them into existing boards (solves the problem of requiring x amount of users for the app to work)
  • Adding badges and rewards to drive social engagement, reward users when they perform actions that benefit the app (i.e. in-app transaction, new posts) or "gamification" to drive social engagement.
  • Promotions and coupons can be “awarded to users” in the badges and rewards section (revenue)
  • In-app transactions
  • Save sort and filter postings
  • Premium features (remove 5 posting per board cap, increase posting duration to >1 week, better posting placement (revenue)
  • Sponsored postings (revenue)
  • More boards, subscription (subscribe and unsubscribe) to different boards
Share this project:

Updates