Stoopt

Inspiration

We recieved our initial inspiration from the instagram account stoopingnyc. Since its creation, the account has attracted over 460K followers and have featured nearly 18K discarded items around NYC. We were very inspired by the idea of stooping as well as the commitment of the account owner. Therefore, we created this project in hope to add to their effort. Specifically, we know that constantly sorting through private messages and updating the platform can be a lot of work and time consuming. So we decided to build this web application, which provides more up-to-date and more easily-accessed information on stooping opportunities. Our end goal is to reduce waste, to promote affordable furniture, to encourage up-cyling trash, and more importantly, to connect and promote the stooping community.

What it does

Our current version of Stoopt is a mininum viable product. There are many more features we wanted to implement but didn't have time to due to time constraints. Ideally, Stoopt would allow users to login, search, post, and see map location about stooping opportunities. Our MVP implementation supports the posting and map display feature. We hope to continue improve this project to better serve the community. This not only includes realizing what we have planned in our Figma prototype, but also many more bonus features (feel free to suggest any ideas you have in mind!).

How we built it

We built this full-stack web application using MERN (MongoDB, Express.js, React, Node.js) stack, git, and yarn. We also utilized Google Cloud Platform and its Google Maps API to allow users to locate Stooping opportunities near them.

Challenges we ran into and Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first time developing a full-stack web application from scratch using MERN stack, and the coding process was definitely not easy with the error messages popping up in the console. We are proud that we were able to set up the communication between our frontend and backend (after tireless debugging, of course). We also integrated Google Map into our website and allowed users to drop a pin to visualize the Stooping opportunities on map.

What we learned

We are proud to say that we definitely walked away with more knowledge of MERN stack and more confidence in our capability to learn and leverage new tools to make a positive impact in our communities. Working as a team of 3, we also learned the importance of collaboration and communication, which are essential skills that can be transferred to workspace in the future.

What's next for Stoopt

Receiving constant updates regarding the item's status is important in stooping. We hope to be able to add voting buttons that will allow other users to verify the condition of the item in the post. This way, anyone walking pass the same item may be able to verify the validity of the post's information and update the current status of the item (e.g. whether it's taken or not).
Taking advantage of image-to-text generation AI model as well as keywords entered by users, we can autogenerate a short description for each featured item. This would help us save user's time from synthesizing their own description, thereby making posting a simpler and more convient experience for users.
Utilizing Google Maps's Places API and Geocoding API to integration autocompletion of addresses and automatic extraction of the address's latitude and longitude.
Adding a wishlist feature where users can enter in items that they are hoping to find. When an item nearby matches with the user's wishlist, we can notify the user about the stopping opportunity.
Promoting the stooping community by allowing users to share their stooping experience - good or bad. They may write short posts about their tips and tricks. Or, they may also share photos or videos of how they are able to reutilize the items they stooped, which can offer design guides and inspirations to others.