Seekr

Home Screen
Lost Board
Upload Listing

Inspiration

How many times have you lost things on campus? How many times have you found those items on campus? Hoodies. Wallets. Cards. Keys. Jewelry. Water bottles. Airpods, ESPECIALLY airpods. Oftentimes, people pass lost items under the premise that it is probably impossible to return it. Other times, people take initiative and post it on a Snapchat story, which gets buried amongst the hundreds of daily posts. On a campus exceeding 35,000 total students, it seems almost surprising there isn’t already a campus wide lost and found service–until now! Seekr is the one-stop web app to both upload and search for lost items.

What it does

For the gracious finders, they can upload pictures, descriptions (such as dents, stickers, location found, etc), and their contact. Simply navigate to the Upload tab, mark it as found, and upload the item. No need to ignore items, there is hope! No need to upload it on Snapchat when there is a centralized way to do so.

For our forgetful friends, they can search for what they may have lost. Further, they can reference descriptions and photos to ensure it is in fact their item. Simply go over to the Found tab and search! We eliminate the need to scour the social media stories and provide a greater chance that their seeking will pay off. If they do not see their item on the Found board, they can navigate to the Upload tab to make a new post about their missing item. Mark it as lost and people all around the campus will be on the lookout for your valuables. These entries are displayed in the Lost tab.

Now to add some fun, there is a leaderboard to track what item/category of item is most frequently lost (we would bet Airpods will always top). Once an item is marked returned, it increments a tracker on the item/category.

How we built it

The website was developed with Nextjs with use of primarily React based systems and components. We used Tailwindcss with the DaisyUI library to format more difficult content structures. The backend was a Firebase with Firestore database and cloud storage

Challenges we ran into

To create a streamlined and frictionless experience, we workshopped different ideas of an account based system and how much information should be required to upload. Our idea was to make a product that was easier than the alternative choices, and an obvious go-to for such situations.

We also had technical challenges of formatting the content, as scaling across devices was initially unstable. As this product would likely be used in conjunction with phones, it had to be reasonably adjusted to both platforms. The choice of a website vs app was also to reduce friction of use.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the dynamic tiles and the interface and user experience to quickly post a found or lost banner so that this is an easy and suitable choice for finding items. We are also happy about our final UI design as none of us came in with any significant design experience.

What we learned

We learned a lot about UI design, CSS, and combining skills into a great user experience. It is important to have a working product, but as alternatives exist, this product should be one they will use over the other choices and that is what we learned in our design and testing.

What's next for Seekr

Building in optional accounts for messaging between finders and seekers
Implementing a time-based check-in system that after a set amount of time will message the user who posted about their listing.
Hosting the website
Mobile app version development