GiveBreath

Inspiration

Governmental countermeasures and individual initiatives against COVID-19 resulted in the suspension of commercial activities all around the world. The supply of unnecessary goods and the profit generated by these sectors has been stopped. Owners of small businesses struggle in covering management costs, employees are losing their jobs and the whole economy is slowing down. What is needed is liquidity. When it's needed is now. Businesses in our affected neighborhood, city and in our country already started to pre-sale goods and services at discounted prices in order to get through these tough times. However, individuals and uncoordinated initiatives cannot achieve the maximum of this idea’s potential. GiveBreath is our idea of Solution. A website that brings together businesses having difficulties and costumers benefiting of discounted goods & services driven by a spirit of solidarity.

What it does

Every owner can sign in by providing the required information and complying with preset features, as address and category of the business, number of employees, a VAT number ownership… The owners will also provide a description of products/services they are offering, the regular price and the applied discount. To direct the financial resources where are really needed, the owners will have two constraints. First, the dimension of the activity cannot overpass pre-established standards. This measure will favor small and local retailers instead of big businesses for which it will be easier to obtain loans from banks and to manage governmental aids bureaucracy. The second constrain refers to the maximum amount of money every owner can get. The amount will be set considering the typology of the business (macro-area). This would reduce both the the waiting time for the provision of the services once the crisis is over, and the risk of having more orders than the actual availability of goods from retailers. Every potential customer that will open the website will find a map of his/her surroundings. The map will show all those businesses registered on the website. Once entered into an appealing business, the customer will find a list of goods or services, their descriptions, their prices, and the applied discount. Filters regarding goods/services’ macro-areas can be applied in order to have a more precise and effective browsing experience. As soon as the customer will proceed in the purchase, through the dedicated page, the money will be sent to the business and a voucher will be received by the customer. The website will connect the supply and the demand promoting solidarity. GiveBreath will help economic situation of both sides through a win-win dynamic, it will strengthen social factors as the trust relationship between customers and local sellers and between owners and employees. Furthermore, GiveBreath is proactively concerned about the environment, promoting the proximity of the purchases and consequently a reduction of carbon emissions.

How I built it

Our main goal is to favour local sellers: the starting point is to develop a system based on a map centered on location of clients, who are thus pushed to find answer to the needs of retailers in the neighborhood.

Challenges I ran into

Implementing a project always involves a certain amount of issues. But, being challenged to find effective, creative and looking forward solutions is one of the main shared attitudes within the members of our team. The problems, we faced so far, are enumerable into three main categories. Indeed, we faced conceptual, technical and contextual problems. The conceptual problems we faced started from defining the mission of the project, then in deciding the inclusiveness and the standards required from the businesses to be accepted. Finally, challenges rose in thinking the best way to design the website prioritizing effectiveness and an enjoyable experience from both costumers and owners. From the technical perspective, daily hard work has been done by coders in finding the best solutions to translate ideas into something tangible, especially given the strict times constraints. Time is undoubtedly one of the main issues because of the deadlines set by.Global Act contest, thus every decision needs to be taken fast and every complexity must be readily deconstructed and understood. Another problem related to the exceptional situation the world is leaving nowadays is the distance between team members. Indeed, none of us can actually leave the habitation of residence, this resulted in coordination and communication problems.