Society

Architecture diagram
Customer use case diagram
Seller interface
Snippets of User interface

Problem statement

Group: Team Hola
Chosen statement: 3. E-Commerce

Team

We are a team of year 3 students in Nanyang Technological University.
You can visit our group repo here

Inspiration

We aim to reignite the communal living (kampung spirit) back into Singaporeans that was lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. We have seen past implementation of TikTok integration on telegram, where people cited that they want to be able to interact and talk about trending videos. We saw this existing gap, and ideated a solution that (1) allows users to chat with each other and (2) common activity of purchasing items at a discount through the popular concept of group buy.

What it does

Our project for the TikTok Hackathon in Singapore introduces an innovative feature called "Society" within the TikTok platform. Society is a group buy feature that enables users in close geographical locations to come together and collectively purchase similar items featured on TikTok. This unique addition also includes a chat feature that facilitates communication among users participating in the same group buy. Society aims to foster communal spirit among TikTok users, creating a digital marketplace with a strong sense of community.

Society features:

Group Buy: Users can initiate or join group purchases of products featured on TikTok. By joining forces, they can access bulk discounts and save on individual shipping costs.
Chat Feature: To enhance the group buy experience, Society provides an integrated chat feature. Users can discuss their purchases, coordinate logistics, and build connections with fellow participants.
In-Chat translation: Tired of copy and pasting chats into google translate? Say goodbye to all these hassle with our in-house translation feature. We allow users to translate text messages in the group chat seamlessly, making the entire experience a more integrated one.
Promoting TikTok as a Shopping Platform: Society transforms TikTok into a comprehensive platform for not only entertainment but also shopping. It connects users with unique products and deals, expanding TikTok's role in users' daily lives.
Support TikTok sellers: By increasing the volume of users through building a community within TikTok and introducing group buy, there is likely to be a greater demand for on platform shop items, thereby increasing sales revenue for influencers or side hustlers who want to start an online shop.
Fostering Communal Bonds: In an increasingly digital world, Society aims to recreate the sense of community and camaraderie that can be found in traditional group buying settings. It strengthens relationships among users while shopping together online.

How we built it

Imgur

Tailwind CSS: We utilized Tailwind CSS to create a visually appealing and responsive user interface, ensuring an enjoyable experience for all TikTok users.
Next.js: Next.js provided us with the flexibility and scalability needed for building a feature-rich web application. Its server-side rendering capabilities ensure fast loading times and smooth performance.
Supabase: Supabase served as our backend, offering a reliable and secure database solution. It allowed us to manage user data, group buy information, and chat interactions seamlessly.
Figma: Figma allowed us to visualise our ideas without investing too much time into coding before we got dirty with our code base.

Challenges we ran into

Developing Society presented us with several challenges that pushed our team to innovate and problem-solve:

Real-time Chat: Implementing a real-time chat feature while maintaining scalability and ensuring data security was a complex task. We had to find a balance between functionality and performance.
Geographical Location Integration: Ensuring that users within close proximity could easily discover and join group buys required precise location tracking and matching algorithms.
User Privacy: We prioritized user privacy and security. Building robust privacy controls and ensuring data protection was an ongoing challenge.
Synchronization: Coordinating the timing of group buys and managing inventory in real-time to prevent overselling was a technical challenge.

What we learned

Developing Society for TikTok's Hackathon was a valuable learning experience. We gained insights into:

User-Centric Design: Prioritizing user experience and feedback is crucial in developing features that resonate with the TikTok community.
Collaboration: Effective teamwork and collaboration were key to overcoming challenges and achieving our goals.
Tech Stack Optimization: Leveraging the right technologies for specific tasks is essential for building a high-performance platform.
Community Building: Creating digital tools that foster community and connections is a powerful way to enhance user engagement.

What's next for Society

International Expansion: Scaling Society to different regions and countries to cater to a global user base. This involves adapting the feature to accommodate various languages, currencies, and regional preferences.
Enhanced User Experience: Continuously improving the user interface and adding new features to enhance the group buy and chat experiences. This includes allowing users to chat with other users even before joining groups. Why use telegram as a platform when you can use an all-in-one app.
Monetization Strategies: Exploring monetization options such as premium features, sponsored group buys, and targeted advertising to ensure the sustainability of Society.
Community Building: Building on the sense of community within Society, we plan to introduce features like such as chatbot integration to make chats easier and auto generation of messages for team leaders to be simpler.