Virtual Malls

All shops in a shopping mall
Take Away Store App (Side)
All Shoping Malls
Take Away App
Products in the shops

Inspiration

Being under lockdown alone has triggered hunger and anger in some nations as we observe the WHO recommendation to national governments. However, the lockdown state affects a number of things including crippling of the economy, increase in domestic violence, hunger, depriving populations of basic needs among others. To help maintain global recommendations as well as ensuring basics are accessible to people, innovative ways, mechanisms and approaches are required to counteract the insurgency, maintaining peace and sustained lives like providing access to basics including also food and health necessities. The Takeaway application under pilot since the 20th of March, 2020 is in the market aiding solutions that liberate populations with facilities that support online ordering and delivery of basics, as they reduce contact as much as possible. To date, looking for a given product from the shopping malls in Uganda is a hectic and tiresome endeavour as you have to move from shop to another, initially to get an idea of the price and also to look for the product. This is time-consuming for customers. To overcome this many customers, go to the well-established super markets as these have organized sections and prices for the items. This, however, implies that the small shops in the same malls are always outcompeted and fail to see their 4th birthday. This platform empowers small and medium enterprises to advertise what they have. Someone can move directly from their offices and go to the ground floor in a small shop “xx” in the shopping mall “yy” to get the product he/she has identified from our platform. His/her can also use the Takeaway app so that everything is delivered to them.

What it does

Virtual Malls provides the public with access to any malls, navigate each, mall and order for any item from their favourite shops in any mall. Virtual malls specifically perform 2 major functions.

Navigation through shopping malls (http://globalautosystem.pythonanywhere.com/) – The platform has a web and mobile version that enables any one to navigate through every shopping mall, check for any particular shop of item from the shops. The mall's platform also helps the mall's manager to keep track of his tenants and also empower the tenants to set up virtual shops.
Take Away App – Takeaway is a mobile application based on the android platform that enables people living in Mbarara and neighbouring districts to order and receive desired products at the comfort in their homes. The innovation is a liberating application developed for people of all kind including the youth, the old and the young. As a self-service application, Takeaway is innovatively modelled with theories of design thinking. It includes 4 core modules that realistically operative as a single coherent system. Distributed-wise, Takeaway is built with the aim of observing total social distance and avoiding all forms of contact at all levels as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Its core modules include: - (1) UX (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ug.global.takeaway) module utilized for making orders of products like Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) directly from stores and receive the products through our trained deliverers; (2) Admin module is used administering of orders as they come in. In its simplest form, store owners on the app use it to register and approve stores, deliverers, and monitor the transaction process; (3) the store module(https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ug.global.jubustore) for managing and coordinating store functions including stocking and stocking level monitor, enabling store agents, for example, pharmacies to add their product/s with pricing, receive orders and deliver the orders; (4) and lastly the delivery module used by delivering agents like Boda-Boda deliverers whenever they get orders near to them for delivery and delivery confirmation. The delivery module algorithm allows for searching for the nearest deliverer to the order source, enabling them to receive orders from a store, pick the package and deliver it to the shown address. With the UX module interacts with the delivery module delivery confirmation through displaying a barcode on delivery that a user scans at the end of the transaction.

How I built it

First of all the platform is being developed using the concepts of social-technical systems where we recognize the interaction between people and technology in workplaces. Furthermore, the concept of design thinking is driving the design process where the end-users are at the centre of the design. Our platform is an all in one integrated platform comprising of a shopping mall information management system managed by the mall administrator who gives tenants’ rights to initiate their own instance of an online shop, inventory management and website. The platform has both a web and mobile application version. Finally, our platform is artificial intelligence (AI) empowered to enable the shop owners to monitor and make decisions about their stock.