Trusty

Inspiration

We got this idea when a friend tried to buy a french bulldog puppy from gumtree. The puppy was really adorable and at a really good price. The friend sent the money with full trust. Sadly, there was no puppy. He got scammed.

That is when we realised that there is a gap in the market for an app that provides protection to people who want the freedom to hunt for a bargain on various forums such as Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace etc but also want the added security of knowing who they are dealing with and having an agreement to rely upon and potentially enforce.

What it does

Trusty allows people to codify their agreements into a contract form. The contracts created are simple and accessible, establishing a relationship between parties and creating a paper trail for the transaction. The app can be used for Buyer/Sellers arrangements, Lender/Borrower arrangements and Service providers/Service needers.

Features

Unique features of this app include:

Requiring a recording of both parties saying to their camera "I accept". This allows both parties to have access to the visual and audio identification of the individual they are dealing with. Creating peace of mind and providing a fail safe for scammers who may use stolen identities for transactions.
As Trusty was developed on the Ionic platform, Trusty is compatible with Android, Microsoft, IOS etc. As a team, we were aware that our target market may strive for a bargain and seek differentiation in their personal products. Now this differentiation will not be a disadvantage and there will be no excuse to not be able to use Trusty. Trusty will strive to be truly universal and accessible to all.
Trusty also contains a library so that all arrangements can be saved and archived. This is especially useful for security down the track, in regard to risk management and the preserving of fact.

Challenges we ran into

Georgia comes from a legal background and Irwin is a first year Engineering student so as a team we ran into a variety of challenges. The 4 largest challenges included:

Marketability. Trusty adds a level of effort to a transaction that may seem inconvenient. To address this, Irwin strived to create a very simply and intuitive design, with future intentions to allow advertisements from websites such as gumtree or carsales to be imported into the app, cutting down on inputting time by the user.
Limited resources. Many ideas were thought of to make this app better, but unfortunately Irwin is the only team member with coding knowledge. Irwin ambitiously decided to use Ionic for the first time which made the journey quite a learning process. In this way we were quite limited with our time. Georgia attempted to assist in managing ideas and heading the creative aspects involved. By doing this, Irwin was able to focus and have a clear vision to follow.
Legal ramifications. Georgia was conscious that individuals may create ineffective contracts and was weary this app may misrepresent it's ability to provide secure transactions. We decided that this app is for facilitation of contracts/agreements that would already have been created, the difference now being, people now have an easier ability to retrieve evidence if they wish. Fundamentally, we believe this app will work through social pressure, rather than through lawyers, in the sense that the app acts as a gateway to filter people who have no intention of honouring their arrangement.

Although we decided scammers may always make attempts, this app creates a level of resistance which should disincentive scammers. In the future, we hope to create a black list when someone does not honour their agreement. In that way, individuals can have more means of being alerted to fraudulent behaviour. Similarly we will strive to create a verification process, so that individuals can know for certain the identity of who they are dealing with.

Introducing a new concept simply. Trusty is such a new concept that it has been incredibly hard to clearly explain what it does and why it is important. Thinking of names was as fun as it was exhausting. Georgia's personal favourite binned name was "Sproof it". Doing some quick market research with friends was a great way to get out of our own echo chamber and see how future consumers would see our app.