Please!

Please is a solution to people who need a quick help from others around the community. Get the app, join the community, and help others! You can even make some side money by helping others!

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Inspiration

Have you ever needed an instant help from other people but not able to get it at the right time? Please provides a community with people who are willing to help others. From individuals to organizations, anyone can ask for a help, and anyone can give a hand! Please brings the power of sharing economy with a small good deed of "helping others" to let people share their ability easily in the local community.

What it does

Please seeks to connect people in the local community. For our prototype, we focus on connecting people in Georgia Tech. Once the user logins with his/her Georgia Tech credential, the user can decide whether to help others or to get help from others. When the user needs help, he/she can simply upload a post that describes the situation and what kind of help is needed. Adding a compensation would be a good way to increase participation rate from other people. When the user wants to give a hand, the user can simply explore the community page, created in a Tinder-card-swiping-style; the user can swipe out to search different needs of the community. For easier exchange of compensation, we have integrated Venmo as a main transactor.

How we built it

Please utilizes React Native as a frontend framework to easily deploy the app to various operating systems. For backend, Please mainly uses Python Flask, integrated with MongoDB and Venmo API. For designing the application, we utilized Adobe XD and Photoshop to create various image assets and unique logo. To fit more with the theme of HackGT 9, "Retro Reset," our design is focused on merging retro style with neat, contemporary style application.

Challenges we ran into

Most of the members did not have much experience with React Native, so we had to start almost everything from scratch. In particular, implementing the eye-catching card swiping animation and making sure it runs flawlessly on the application was one of the hardest part of the whole project. Fortunately, all four members did a great job with allocating roles and we were able to finish the project on time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We believe that quick learning and applying is one of the most important skills of a software engineer. From that perspective, this project clearly demonstrates our ability to learn new technology and intertwine different skillsets to come up with a creative product. Moreover, we are also proud that we used our knowledge to create a product that can help the local society, which also fits well with Georgia Tech's motto: "Progress and Service."

What we learned

By developing fully from backend to frontend, we were able to understand the overall structure of the full-stack application development. Also, from effectively dividing the roles - a designer, frontend/backend developers, and a marketer - we learned that an effective teamwork enables stunning outcomes that might seem impossible in such a limited time frame.

What's next for Please!

Currently our prototype only serves for the Georgia Tech community, but we hope to expand the app to different local communities so that we can even serve for more social goods. Moreover, we would like to add more pages to the app that can enhance user experience. Lastly, we would like to add a chatting functionality for better communication between the "helper and helpee."

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