PocketSG

Inspiration

As we identified certain challenges new immigrants face upon arrival and settling into Singapore, we decided to look into the essential apps such as Grab, TraceTogether, SG MRT and SingPass. These apps are very simple, user friendly with bright and warm colors which invokes a sense of comfort to the users. This gave us the inspiration to also allow our users to feel calm and collected amidst the hectic journey of coming to Singapore. Furthermore, our final inspiration comes from Asana which is a collaborative group application that ensures better management of tasks. This inspired us to come up with a to-do list for users to do which ensures a seamless transition to Singapore.

What it does

PocketSG is a collection of services such as finding more about dining, transport services, guides, maps, to do list, forums and messaging for one to know the structure, network and culture of Singapore. Dining and transport services will be in the form of blogs that provides information about the relevant topics for users to understand what are the options available here in Singapore and how our transport system works. Guides will provide them with useful services like a tax calculator to help them calculate their tax, housing related information, financial advice and many more services to help them cope with the working scene in Singapore. The most striking component is our 'Forum' page which allows local Singaporeans to guide and answer questions from foreigners. This enables a sense of 'kampung spirit' where locals and foreigners unite and help together. If they wish to private message a user that has replied for a follow up question, they may do so just by clicking on the username of the person to start messaging. We understand that there are many things users will have to do when they move here and it may be hard to keep track, hence, based on the option selected by the user (long term or short term stay), our to do list will have a list of recommended actions they should take. But, users are free to remove or add more tasks that they have to do. Overall, this allows foreigners to better settle into Singapore.

How we built it

We first used figma to come up with the layout and design that we wanted for the application. We then used react native to code out some of the features of PocketSG.

Challenges we ran into

Our main challenges arise from the development of the application. As we are not very proficient in coding mobile applications, we tried to use React Native to code out the unique features of our application. However, the main problem was trying to implement the functionality of the application, such as uploading a new post in the forum and creating an interactive to do list.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have been able to come up with an idea that we believe will help users better transition living in Singapore. We were also able to come up with a layout that we were comfortable in and code out some parts of the application.

What we learned

From this entire experience, we are able to emphatize with those experiencing challenges with moving overseas. Migration is a tough and life-changing decision, hence we hope to help more of these people who experience this kind of struggles better in the future; be it coming up with an app or physically helping someone, we should uphold our principle of 'kampung spirit' and ensure foreigners have the best impression of Singaporeans.

What's next for PocketSG

We aim to widen our user scope to not just young working adults, but to people of almost all ages, which includes students, families and even the elderly. We also hope to liaise with other companies such as Google to provide live locations of certain locations, and also partner with SingPass developers so that certain information such as age and place-of-stay can be used well to provide suggestions such as recommended food locations or helping to plan for retirement, if one is near retirement age.

Built With

• figma
• react-native