Zero Hour

Inspiration

In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been difficult to make stores safe for both staff members and customers. Due to the density of customers in shops and stores, social distancing is not always respected, making the risk of contamination higher for everyone. During lockdowns, multiple governments shut businesses considered non essential down and limited the number of customers a first necessity store or shop could welcome. Unfortunately massive waiting lines started appearing in front of those stores, and while social distancing is respected inside stores, it isn’t always respected in waiting lines, thus still increasing the risk of contamination and not making first necessity shops unsafe despite the measures taken. Once lockdowns were lifted like they were in France, non essential businesses saw an important influx of customers that have been waiting for months to do their shopping. This resulted into social distancing not being respected in those businesses, making them once again unsafe for both customers and staff members. Not only has the pandemic made spaces used by the general public and workplaces unsafe, it has also made an important dent into non essential businesses’ revenues: by closing them during lockdowns, a large portion of them suffered massive financial losses or completely closed down. How can we allow the reopening of businesses considered non essential without jeopardizing the safety of consumers and workers? How can we get rid of waiting lines in front of shops?

What it does

This is why Zero Hour was made. Zero Hour is an app that allows business owners to regulate and limit the number of customers inside their shops, without creating waiting lines in front of them, thus reducing contacts and lowering contamination risks. Instead of making customers wait in front of the store, the app creates a virtual waiting line allowing social distancing to be respected both inside and outside stores. Owners determine themselves the number of spots their store will have, which is the number of customers they will welcome. This way, they will know the exact number of customers present in their shop at any given time.

How we built it

The app is built with the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React Native and Node.js). We plan to deploy the app on IBM servers.

What's next for Zero Hour

In a post Covid World, Zero Hour could help removing waiting lines in social or cultural events, as well as other places such as restaurants or administrative buildings.

Built With

• express.js
• mongodb
• node.js
• react-native