Problem statement
While social distancing is the recommended approach to flatten the curve, the lack of social interaction can make people feel a lack of routine, productivity, and socialization. With Global Recession coupled with the need to Quarantine, there is a huge void in lack of jobs catering to staying home and heightened the demand for companionship. People want to belong. Jobs, Dating, socializing, everything has come to standstill through quarantining. People sometimes lose track of their old friends or tend to talk more with the new ones. Thats where, our product comes to play.
Inspiration
Inspired from the netflix show, The Circle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-m4gFdrQ8M Humans are social creatures. Quarantining and staying home is hard when you are on your own and you have to go about your day to day tasks alone. How about having an app, which can tell you when your friends are doing a certain activity so you can do that together, virtually. Like "Shooby is cooking or gymming, would like to join?". You can cook at the same time as your friend and chat the entire time, during video conferencing or using alexa or google home. Not only would it help you be on track, day to day but make quarantining really fun and social and you can also monetize these experiences.
What it does
- You can create activities of regular chores to do with your friends.
- You can view pre-assigned schedules of your friends for the day, to see if you would like to join a certain activity.
- Your friends can also start a new activity and it would be pushed to you as a notification and you can join their session or activity and multiple people can join. You can text or video call or just use google home or Alexa as joining mechanism.
- You can challenge your friends to random challenges like pushup challenge or cooking challenge.
- You can also make money by offering these sessions to strangers per hour like cooking classes or dance classes or just listening to someone video conferencing.
- You can view, every hour the top trending activity or chores done by people in your area on the global map.
Why we are unique
Unlike other popular live streaming services, we are not geared towards video streaming exclusively but having a shared communal experiences through voice, text and video communication. Our activity based companionship model also sets us apart from other communication platforms that serve a singular recreational experience. We empower users to have companionship and accountability while performing chores or having fun.
Solution proposal
The Quarantine together app aims to virtually connect people to their friends and create new social connections in times of social distancing. The goal is to connect people via virtual activities such as Yoga, Cooking, or simply talking to people you haven’t spoken to in a while, keeping people on track throughout the day with a customizable schedule and monetizing your activities as a source of income such as providing online Dance classes, etc. You see events from all people in your friend list, so you might connect with an old friend doing a particular activity, thus keeping you accountable.
Scenarios
- The user wants to host a group activity (yoga). He/she creates an activity then shares it so that it’s visible to his/her friends. Schedule view, Create a new activity view
- User is looking for something to do while isolating at home. The user opens the app to see what activities his/her friends are doing or have planned for the day. The user can add these activities to his/her schedule or join the virtual online activity.
- Browse activity (friends) The user doesn’t have many social contacts and is looking for people to connect with who might share hobbies with them.
- Browse activity (location-based)
Key functionalities - I CAN statements
I can add an activity to my schedule. I can invite my peers and/or open up the activities for others to join. I can find activities to do with others outside of my friend circle. I can find activities to do based on the top trends in my area. (Global map) I can view my friend’s schedule of activities for the day. I can set a price for my public sessions (monetize).
Key screens
Registration/Login User register through email/social media auth. Login through simple username/password. Mark your home location
Schedule view
List of your activities for the day, week, month Option to add an activity
Create a new activity view
1st iteration: Choose a types of activity and provide details Activity name Activity details Datetime start Datetime end Private, Friends only, Public, Specific list of people Image (optional) Notification goes out to users.
Browse activities
Shows a list of your friends activities with the option to join or add to your schedule Shows a ranked list of top activities trending in your area (Global map) Open questions: Perimeter to scope these activities?? Just friends or everyone? Tap on any activity and commit with a duration to join. Points rewarded on activity completion. Update photos/video which is approved by community to get points? Sort of peer review.
Ongoing activity view
- Video call
- Some graphic animation about the activity
- People can post encouraging and positive emojis only
- Activity room chat feature
Rewards view
- Total points and breakdown per activity
- Also shows decay due to non-use
- Modeling penalty for stepping out of the house
- Detection
- Evaluate using distance from home location.
Challenges I ran into
Integrating Google home skills with Facebook chatbot to create conversational intents for people. Integrating trending events with the Maps API. Learnt Front end.
Project Links - https://whimsical.com/LQXzvsZtvHmV2gbVmcn2wf Project Spec - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1OBYYIERzKF_FB7H_h5AgXCr2Qr_UOnU9-mu_L3OUaSw/edit?fbclid=IwAR1o8dgr40xwyPfWsqy89xhMtC8gRY9k8dCcLmlkiMWntQg0k9simF6IaaA#heading=h.ifudr6u74z2b
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