SmartBuy

Get the best price for best products

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Inspiration

During the beginning of lockdown it was really hard to find paper towels, sanitizer or masks in one’s nearby departmental stores. Visiting different departmental stores in search of items was impossible due to the risk of the widespread of COVID-19. All the major suppliers of these items were distributed to major departmental stores which go out of stock very quickly. Moreover, over the quarantine period the instable source of income made it a little riskier to purchase expensive necessary products and finding coupons and deals online was another big task too. In the midst of these problems brought up the idea of ‘SmartBuy’.

What it does

SmartBuy helps/guarantees a way in which people can get necessary products that are running low in supply in the market. You might be wondering how does it do this? Well, once a buyer requests for a product SmartBuy requests the buyer to wait for certain time period and during this time period SmartBuy collects data other buyers the state who have requested for similar product. The frequency of the product state-wise is displayed to the seller. As the seller is getting a bulk order it is easier for the seller to contact manufacturer for bigger order, also due to it being a bulk order the seller would likely reduces the price of the item (helping buyers financially too); however, this data is showed thousands of sellers. Hence, there would be a bid price placed for item’s order (of a particular state) and which seller hast lowest bid before the waiting time period would get the order. Once successfully bidding the lowest price, SmartBuy notifies the details of item and seller to the buyer. It also sends the list of the buyers with their corresponding address to the seller. It is then the seller’s responsibility to send the items to the buyers.

How we built it

We built this web application using Angular for the front end of the web application with Python used for the backend. Moreover, we attempted to use MongoDB for storing all the details of the buyers, sellers and the items offered on SmartBuy. During the process we also realized having a UI/UX ready before programming would give us clarity on what do we exactly want to achieve and help us achieve our goal faster. Hence, to build the UI/UX we used AdobeXD.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major challenges we ran into was to find a way in which it would be easier for the seller to accept bulk order. Moreover, translating this in backend and structuring the data in a way which would be easier for the seller to view was one of the major challenges we ran into. We originally decided to use Angular.js but as it was our first working with it we ran into a lot of problems and settled to use Angular instead.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The major accomplishment we’re proud of is how we were able to translate our knowledge we gained in our Data Structure class in real life and more importantly impacting the society in a positive manner. We feel very accomplished to be able to use Angular and Python for the first time to create a web application implementing a simple powerful idea that would help people in difficult times.

What we learned

We learned a lot about the importance of UI/UX design which brought a lot of clarity to us while we were translating our idea into reality. Moreover, working with Python and Angular together to create a web app for the first time helped us understand the entire lifecycle and how everything is structured in an efficient way. After this hackathon we can proudly say we are confident and comfortable working in the world of angular and python environment as opposed to before Hackathon.

What's next for SmartBuy

We think there are is always room for perfection and more complexities to the hack we made. We would be love to work on them after Def Hacks and explore different areas and horizons. We would take feedback from different people in order to improve my hack

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