CommShare

Share Items, Reduce Consumerism and Battle it Out to Be the Best Community!

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Inspiration

In this day and age, consumerism is a big problem that we face as a society. It is all too common for people to purchase items which they may only use a few times. The idea for this project arose when one of our teammates was building and kitting out a van. There was a need for specialist equipment, but it wasn't feasible to purchase everything when it would only be used a few times. This got us thinking. How could people get access to these items for free, saving individuals money, but also reducing consumerism? Enter CommShare!

What it does

CommShare is a unique marketplace that allows communities to connect and share items with one another. Users can list items they are happy to lend out to people in their community, as well as post requests for specific items they are hoping to borrow from their community. It provides a distinctive opportunity for communities as a whole to reduce their consumption of products that may only be used a few times. More than this, CommShare helps to build a strong, interconnected community, as it allows people to connect with those in their area and help one another out.
This strong community aspect is reinforced with the gamification of the app, where communities are given points for helping each other out, and can battle it out against other communities for the position of top community! We love the idea of facilitating a modern, Australian version of the Indonesian concept of Gotong Royong!

How we built it

We started out by building up the frontend of the product, and then later building in the back end. Using a UI package we ensured there was a consistent look and feel to the application as well as ensuring that the application was in line with other applications.

Challenges we ran into

The main conceptual challenge we ran into was how to incentivise community members to list items they had and would be happy to lend out. We didn't want to add a monetary side, so instead we settled on the gamification of the app. This means that individuals earn points for their community when they lend out objects. This fosters an element of competition and encourages users to share more regularly within their community.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are really proud of pulling off everything we did within the timeframe. Initially, we were focused on creating a working frontend, and thought we would move on to the backend only if we had time. Now, we are looking forward to a functional backend including a database for users and products thanks to the hard work of the rest of the team! More than this I (Jamie) am incredibly proud of how my team has tackled everything, even though collectively we didn't have much experience in web applications. I have learnt so much from my teammates and cannot thank them enough for taking me under their wings and helping me grow (Thanks guys!!). Aside from this, we are really proud to put forward a product that can be so beneficial to our communities and the environment!

What we learned

We've learnt a lot, both technically and from a business viewpoint. Much of what you can see in the final product are things that individual teammates had very little experience in initially. From a business standpoint, we really had to think and learn how to incentivise users when the platform is not monetary based.

What's next for CommShare

Looking forward, CommShare can only grow from here. We would love to see this application in use in our communities, and see it expand further. As this happens, we will need to adapt and make changes, such as the way data is stored. We are also looking forward to expanding the community functionality such that users can form their own communities rather than be restricted to just a postcode. New community types may be based on street, a specific radius, or perhaps even similar interest communities where people list items specific to that interest!

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