Sowing is Growing

Login page. Users can log in with Google
Main home page. Showing your seeds, and what seeds others have to offer nearby
User's wishlist. Seeds in the exchange which are in your wishlist are shown with a star.

Inspiration

We were inspired by the Future Museum in Berlin which had a section on sustainable living and ideas to promote sustainability in the community. In this display, the idea of a seed library was described, where people can "take out" seeds from the library, grow plants with them and then "return" the seeds to the library from their grown plants.

We wanted to take this idea and bring it online, and making it easier for people to share seeds with others in their local area.

What it does

Users can sign into "Sowing is growing" with their google account. Once signed in, the users can add seeds which they own to their profile under the "Your seeds" tab. They can also add seeds to their wishlist in the same area.

On the right hand side of the home page, shows other users of the app and displays which seeds they are offering for exchange. Any of these seeds which are within your wishlist are highlighted with a star.

How we built it

We used Firebase to create a quick backend. Within this we used Firebase's authentication to quickly setup Google login. We also setup a database in this with a collection for seeds and a collection for users.

To make the frontend we used React. We found this was easy to integrate into Firebase and we were used to using it so allowed us to built the site quickly.

To help us make the art for the app we used Dall-E to generate the background assets. We wanted a painted style to the backgrounds so often used the prompt "in a gouache style" to get a painted look.

We took inspiration for the overall theme of the app from Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley, both having a cute and cosy theme with a strong nature vibe.

Challenges we ran into

We wanted to add the ability for users to add seeds to both their offerings and wishlist, but ran out of time to add this feature. We populated the user and seed data manually in the firebase database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Making an app which is (mostly) functional! Different users can sign on and it will display a different view for each user.

We are also proud of the theming, it felt very cohesive in the end and I think we met our goal of building something cute :)

What we learned

We learnt a lot about Firebase and working with a backend in general, most of our previous entries were a frontend only. We also felt like we learnt a lot more about CSS and design.

What's next for Sowing is Growing

We would like to fully implement the "add a seed" button. It would also be good to add the ability to notify another user about collecting the seeds you would like.

We would also like to make the site responsive and work on mobile :)