Inspiration
Tchibo's mission to be a driver of sustainability and provide top-grade coffee to communities around the world really resonated with me. I love community building and I saw this as an opportunity to put together tech, coffee, and communities. 3 concepts that were the foundation to the Tchibo App. Tchibo App was born to create a network of coffee enthusiasts and friends that can gift coffee to each other and receive gifts and rewards in return. Friends can stay up to date with what their friends are doing and gift them the caffeine booster they need to get where they want to be. It's the perfect way of using technology to foster productivity especially for young professionals that are eager to gift a cup of coffee to their colleagues and peers!
What it does
Tchibo App is somewhere between the trifecta of social media, e-commerce, and quick transactions--it brings the best of these 3 emerging concepts of today's digital world. Users can create post with their inspirational quotes or daily motivation or post pictures of their coffee, work...whatever they want. They can let their friends know what the best coffee in Tchibo's market is... and then they can send that coffee as a gift right through the app! Not sure what their friends like? They can view their friends profile to see if their friend likes medium roast, or dark roast, or what days they really need caffeine the most. Users can then build reward points for sending gifts, posting daily and building post streaks like Snapchat, and referring their friends to join the app and the Tchibo community! Rewards results in credits for discounts on the user's next order :)
How I built it
Tchibo App was born through SwiftUI, Firebase, and Algolia for efficient user searches. I spent a lot of time architecting the design to make sure that everything would be efficient and the app could be a smooth experience for all coffee lovers.
Challenges I ran into
Being a solo developer was really difficult. I definitely needed caffeine myself on most days to keep me going. There were a lot of tabs in the app and keeping track of each one with their own data model seemed like a ridiculous rabbit hole sometimes. I wasn't super comfortable with Firebase so I spent a lot of time figuring out the nuances of storing and fetching data and making sure that it would be efficient. Overall, I learned so much from this though and I think I overcame a lot of the challenges!
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I am proud of the concept that Tchibo App grew to be. I was inspired by the wholesome-ness of Tchibo, and I believe that the app follows in that footstep. The difficulties of implementing the gift giving system... adding friends... creating users... they were all necessary steps in creating an app with the ability to keep up with the community and really create that inclusive experience. So for that, I am proud that the obstacles were taken on and gotten through, I think it is worth it in the end with producing an app that rings true to Tchibo.
What I learned
I learned so much about Firebase, from FirebaseAuth with user creation to posting images using Firebase storage, I can definitely say that this was an enriching experience. I also learned my fair share of coffee flavors and coffee descriptions after spending hours parsing the JSON response for that type of data. All in all, I learned that building community-based apps can be difficult but as I mentioned, I think they feel the most rewarding for me!
What's next for Tchibo App
Tchibo App is looking to create friend quizzes and send yearly birthday rewards to bring out each user's individual flavors and make all users feel connected. Additionally, server side data storage can use data analytics generated by public user posts and country to allow Tchibo to better cater towards their customers around the world. With that, Tchibo can be better prepare to expand to regions where their user base is growing. From there, Tchibo can provide quicker global delivery of coffee and users can track their shipment straight through the app! I imagine a world where in a Tchibo hotspot where there are a lot of users, Tchibo can set up real time coffee delivery gifts to users just like a local coffee shop :) in an age where we can find ourselves back together again, users can order coffee for someone straight in their coworking space as well!
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.