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The problem to tackle

Lockdown is surely difficult to deal with. As people who live in a region heavily affected by it (Italy), we have been firmly invited to stay home, going outside only for primary needs.
This situation is serious, and the first thing we can do as citizens is staying home. However, staying home has never been so hard. People are looking at the old and now prohibited habits in curious ways; long walks and friends meeting have never been so interesting.
On another point of view, both small and big companies are facing an unexpected crisis that would lead to bankruptcy in many cases. How to raise awareness and encourage people staying home in a funny and playful way? How to help companies to face this crisis?
We tried to come up with a solution to these, or at least with our personal way to help everybody to actually avoid going outside.
With this in mind, we started developing the project called SofaSoGood.

The solution we bring to the table

We designed an app prototype solution that could check if users stayed home on a specific day. It is quite straightforward: for every day spent home you receive points that can be used to redeem rewards.
Rewards are offered by Partners, both Companies and Cultural entities (such as museums or cinemas). In this way, Partners can actively take part in the challenge and help the population dealing with the lockdown.
Our idea is that in future, SofaSoGood could be integrated with the European Governments Covid-19 tracking apps, like the upcoming Italian app called “Immuni”. This app, that people can download voluntarily, is able to keep track of people's health, movements and interactions by Bluetooth Low Energy technology and GPS. The use of this app by a wide amount of people would be really important, in order to respect the social distance and control the spreading of the virus even after the lockdown is over. This connection between the two apps would be great in order to encourage people to be safe at home.

How does SofaSoGood works?

Once the app is downloaded freely from the marketplace, the user can log in as he prefers, with the E-mail, Facebook, Google or Immuni account. After having accepted all the rules, the app automatically will reward the user with one point only if he stayed home for the whole day. In this way day by day the user will obtain a stack of points that can be spent on available rewards, by selecting the prize. The app will automatically send the prize/voucher/coupon to the user email.
Since the data of positions and Wifi connections are stored locally, after the user grants permissions to make his data accessible, there is no need to transfer them to app servers.

The story of our journey at EUvsVirus

Everything described below is made from scratch in the last 3 days:

• The UI/UX-prototype of the app;
• A fully detailed customer journey in graphic and textual versions;
• A survey for the better customer development with 100+ responses confirming the need for our solution (see business plan for further details);
• Came up with a safe and technically feasible way to check if the user stayed home - the wi-fi tracking feature;
• Calculated the expenses needed for MVP development and for 6 months of app maintenance.

We designed the entire solution during the three days-long hackathon. Our core goal is to link SofaSoGood with Immuni/other Covid-19 Governments Apps; however since “Immuni” app is still not on market and we only know the features it will present, we came up with a first idea based on WiFi technology. Assuming that a user will always use the same WiFi (or LAN) connection, our app just needs to locally check if the current WiFi connection matches the one defined as “home/work connection”. Home connection can be selected during the first access. Starting from the definition of the User Journey inside the app, we discussed how our solution would be inserted in today's market environment. We created a survey in order to collect people’s opinions about the rewards, the concern of being tracked, the connection with the Government App and the Wifi solution. Collecting responses, asking opinions on Slack and meeting the mentor we were encouraged in small improvements, both from possible customers and business representatives. We also managed to create a business model to understand the real possibilities of the app on the market. At the end we finally created a mock-up of our final solution, that shows the main features along with a demonstration video.

Our solution’s impact on the crisis

Our solution is designed to bring help to each user in different ways: first of all it acts as an entertainment tool, becoming a good decoy to the idea of quarantine and isolation and helping preserving users’ mental health. Secondly, SofaSoGood indirectly preserves citizens’ safety by encouraging them to stay home, and by leveraging the use of the different Governments apps, such as “Immuni”. Companies that will work with us will benefit both in terms of brand awareness and with a positive brand image influence, as they are contributing to the soonest resolution of this crisis.

Necessities in order to continue the project

After having taken into consideration the solution feasibility, we think our project could reach its best potential as an Android and iOS smartphone app, with the possibility to be linked to the “Immuni” and other Covid-19 tracking apps. This would require some development work and resources, such as a mobile app developer and the integration to external apps frameworks.

The value of your solution(s) after the crisis

We see our project positively impacting society in following ways:

• Companies that will work with us will contribute to “flattening the curve” by incentivizing people to be socially responsible. #Stayhome, #Istayhome and other hashtags outline this trend and we plan to make some difference here. It is a real chance for socially active enterprises to save people’s lives.
• We aim to support small businesses too. We will connect local companies that suffer the most with people who will support the local enterprises. People stay home, the situation gets better, small local businesses get new customers once it is over.
• We strongly believe that our project can tackle the negative perception of private companies during this crisis. People will see that businesses don’t just chase profits but also care about the well-being of fellow citizens.