Inspiration
We noticed that GT students were dealing with a tough situation finding a secure and reliable subleaser or subleasee. We wanted to consolidate that into one platform, which led us to creating SpotSwap.
What it does
SpotSwap provides a safe and secure way for College students to sublease their student housing, and find a lease for their summer internships.
How we built it
Utilizing Apple's Map Kit! We used custom annotations for our listing markers, which users can interact with and then even communicate with other users. They request contact info on listings they like and can also like their favorite listings. Our backend and communication channels were done through firebase, most members had experience with it so it was the easiest implementation in order to get us off the ground fast, giving us more time to troubleshoot issues revolving around MapKit and the requests feature.
Challenges we ran into
A lot of the challenges we faced revolved around apple's MapKit. Everyone on our team was new to using the tool so there was a significant learning curve. It delayed the process of the app slightly since other features were dependent on the communication within the home-screen of the app.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our UI and how we created a simple yet powerful app. We wanted an app that provided big impact for its users while being simple and easy to use. We think we accomplished both of those things, our designers did a great job creating the layout for each of the screens which the team implemented perfectly. I think this allows for fantastic scalability of the app, especially since we are ambitious to expand to other campuses.
What we learned
A lot about the subleasing process and what college students need and want in a platform to connect them with potential renters. They want simple, safe, secure and powerful. A lot of interviews and data collection took place before we even wrote one line of code to make sure we had the basis of what a good subleasing app looks like, we wanted to tailor it towards our target audience. We also learned that not everything we implement has the ease of use we think it does, so there was a lot of iterations of certain screens to get them right before demo day.
What's next for SpotSwap
Publishing! We want to hit the ground running after demo day to provide our platform for students in the fall. We know most people have found a summer lease but now we can market the app to get it on college campuses to populate early for next summer. So any feedback on the app would be amazing. Thank you for listening to us and learning about SpotSwap! We appreciate it.
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