Sploot | Devpost

Slideshow link: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/15U-BqQPsZ5iakv_Mo5zElA0qvC51ukOeTKJ2qUr5WAQ/edit?usp=sharing

Inspiration

Why Sploot? With more people working from home due to the pandemic, the need for a loving cat-panion has spiked. People are spending more time and money on pets as well as posting more pet-related posts on social media. Mental health discussions have also found pets a paw-sitive relief to many conditions. However at the same time, financial, traveling and health difficulties have caused an increase in abandoned pets. Difficulty accessing vets have also boosted the need for discussions and connections amongst pet owners. Sploot thus comes in as a centralized app for all pet types that offers personalized management as well as scientific information. Discussions and postings are characterized by topics and easily accessed. Fun topics such as memes or daily trending pet news are also aimed to foster love and connectivity.

What it does

Sploot is a non-profit app that offers a personalized pet calendar, a professional yet engaging forum, safe and quick transactions amongst verified owners only, and support for local mental health and rescue associations. Sploot makes a difference by donating all transaction fees to mental health associations and all pet products to rescues. Only sponsorship support is used for app development, marketing and events planning. Sploot stands out amongst competitors as existing apps are for profit, focuses on single pet, and often requires subscription. Existing forums have minimal participation and high scam vulnerability. Thus, Sploot enters with convenient management, active forums, safe transactions and good purposes. It essentially saves all your time spent for pets on calendar, google, social platforms, and transaction platforms all together in one!

How we built it

Given the time frame and number of team members, we decided to focus on the UI of the app and we used figma to design the User Interface of the app. The app can be further completed on IOS and Android devices. For further development, we expect to be using swift and android studio to build fully functioning applications that can be used in real life. Since we are a non profit app, the maintenance of the app will depend on the sponsors we have. We will consider not adding a lot more new functionalities so we can focus our resources on app maintenance and server maintenance.

Challenges we ran into

We started out with 3 members in our team, but as we brainstormed ideas, we realized that we had different goals for this hackathon, but the whole thing has already started. We communicated with each other and found out our goals were too far apart to amend so we had to use the remaining time that we had and build something that we think is right and innovative for this hackathon. We couldn’t finish a compete project with time and number of team members left. So we decided what was important and focused on those aspects. I think that we have overcome this challenge that faced us and came up with a great project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of bringing our new idea into practice and successfully developing a prototype/demo for the app that we hoped to build. As we only decided on the theme late Friday, we spent the whole day Saturday to expand the idea and form pieces of thoughts into the overall framework. We are also proud to take business strategies such as target audience, market competition and future strategies into consideration. Thus this project also has a business mindset instead of purely technical. Lastly, this is a non-profit software that we hope can bring good causes to the community. We hope to raise awareness for mental health and help local rescues. As pet owners ourselves, we find interest and need in an app like Sploot and hope to meet others with the same interest via Sploot.

What we learned

First, we learned that having smooth communication is very important. It is essential that every member is contributing and willing to listen to each other. It is difficult if no one is sharing or if one person is trying to over-control. Second, we learned that proper task and time management is crucial for an event with time-limit. We were able to finish in time because we each knew clearly the goals and kept in touch for constant feedback.Thirdly, we learned to be positive and creative. There may be ideas that are hard to materialize, but we tried our best to either demonstrate it or explain in words. Given the short framework, it is more important to have a good idea than trying to develop a full project. Lastly, we were able to realize what we are good at and what we are lacking. This helps us to position ourselves more clearly, especially our roles in a team. We can thus be better prepared for future events and are excited to be back again next year!

What's next for Sploot

Future strategic outlook of Sploot include finishing up R&D, initiating marketing and sponsor search, launching the product focusing in Ontario, starting in-person events (eg.mental health themed shelter visits) and lastly expanding nation-wide. If we had more time we would implement a simple version of the app using android studio or swift and build a backend, we could also rent a server and push this app to be really online and fully functional. The app would also require more people to help complete it. We also expect to be building a website for our proposal, giving users not only the option to use or application on their phones but also on their computer. Since we focus one of our aspects on security, we will also enhance our cyber security for our system and implement user recognition by entering ID information. This will help us to prevent fraudulent in out app and more users will be inclined to use our app for transaction and the more will be donated to mental health care facilities.