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  Home Page

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  Admin Flow

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  User Flow

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  Logic Flow

Inspiration:

We were inspired by the need to bring clarity, trust, and simplicity to the clothing donation experience. In traditional systems, donors often contribute their items with the best intentions - only to be left in the dark about where those items end up. That uncertainty creates a disconnection between the act of giving and its actual impact. Our app bridges that gap by offering real-time updates, allowing donors to follow their contributions throughout the delivery journey. By enhancing transparency, we aim to make the donation process not just easier, but also more meaningful and accountable.

What it does:

Project Ropa is a mobile app that streamlines the clothing donation process. Users can log and track their donations, while admins scan barcodes and QR codes to verify items and update delivery statuses across multiple checkpoints.

How we built it:

We designed an intuitive user interface for both donors and admins, focusing on accessibility and transparency. QR and barcode scanning features connect donation data between users and admins, ensuring each package is traceable from start to finish. Our tech stack is through SwiftUI and our data is managed by database. By minimizing the unique tech we use, we can focus on providing a simple platform that can be modified and published by anyone (even without technical experience). Our tech stack can also be hosted completely for free (Swift by App Store, and Firebase free plan).

Why We Have A Sustainable Design

We use lightweight, low-bandwidth tools, open-source frameworks (Swift and Firebase). Both are easily maintained over the long term, as Swift is App Store's native language and Firebase has guaranteed uptime due to Google's hosting. Our designs break down the user flow into simple and intuitive steps which can be used by anyone, and Swift's default accessibility allows for custom visibility settings, "read-aloud" mode, and more.

The key:

Our app takes NO cost to upload (outside of the mandatory fee to publish on the App Store). Firebase can support 50K reads/day which is more than enough to support everything you need. Not to mention, since everything is centralized in Swift, all you have to do is clone our repo and the setup will take less than 30 minutes to complete. We already plan for the future to centralize all donations through our applications, and existing functionality supports all types of Project Ropa donations that go beyond simple QR code tracking as per the spec.

Challenges we ran into:

One key challenge was designing an intuitive flow that smoothly integrates both barcodes and QR codes. We had to clearly separate user and admin actions: barcodes for verifying donation contents and QR codes for updating delivery statuses, while keeping the experience simple and seamless. Balancing technical complexity with usability took several iterations and careful design thinking. (Add one tech challenge)

Accomplishments that we're proud of:

We created a dual-interface system that allows real-time tracking, content verification, and status updates—all while keeping the design user-friendly and mobile-first. The donation experience is now both transparent and efficient.

What's next for Project Ropa:

We’re excited to evolve Project Ropa into a smarter, more dynamic platform. Next steps include integrating image-based item verification—potentially powered by AI—to automatically detect and log donated items. We also aim to enhance delivery transparency through interactive maps and more granular status updates. On the admin side, we’ll introduce richer tools and customizable interfaces, giving admins more control and personality in how they manage and track donations.

Built With

• firebase
• swift