ServiceSwap

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  This lady needs her lawn mowed, and she can offer delicious meals in return.

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  This man can mow her lawn, and he just wants some home-cooked meals in exchange. It's a perfect match!

Inspiration

Our inspiration was a tool renting platform that allowed neighbors to rent tools from each other for a fee. That idea didn’t seem like it was in the spirit of simply fostering community good. So instead we eliminated the monetary aspect from our app altogether. We want our users to help one another because they know it will enrich their lives to build relationships with their neighbors.

What it does

Service Swap is a program that provides the ability for local communities to provide and post talents and skills they possess in exchange for other forms of help from their neighbors. Our primary example is an elderly lady who needs her driveway shoveled in exchange for a delicious home cooked meal. This program can make that vision a reality. Service Swap is neighbors helping neighbors.

How we built it

We started by using a utility called Thunkable because our vision was a mobile app, but we were all unfamiliar with it and we didn’t get very far. Instead we turned to our “skills” in java to create a prototype. We tortured ourselves all night trying to make Java FX work.

Challenges we ran into:

We went through two (2!) different development tools (Flutter & Thunkable), and wasted a good 5 hours of our time bashing our heads against walls. When we were sufficiently brain-damaged, we turned to Java. A great many hours of Monster, Red Bull, and missing semicolons later, the program was finally satisfactory. It was not the program we envisioned at the start, but it is what we were able to hack together.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even though we were not able to create a mobile app, we were able to create a prototype that demonstrates our original intent.

What we learned:

We learned that everything needs time to be productive. We also learned about how to consider in what ways Service swap could be abused by bad people. For example, a bad user could use our app to take advantage of an elderly woman. We attempted to combat this with badges on profiles for being verified through a background check, being a "top user" with many good experiences on record, and a "lives close by" indicator. The person receiving the request to connect with a user is able to deny the connection when they review the request.

What's next for ServiceSwap

In a perfect world we would want to go ahead and produce a mobile app similar to Tinder. We want to do this because the UI is very simple and easy for an older non tech-savvy person to pick up and use. We would also look forward to being surprised by the different ways people use our program.

Built With

• java