Books For Humanity

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Discover page
Book post
Book Info pop up
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BOOKS FOR HUMANITY

As a team of passionate book enthusiasts, our goal was to create a book themed that was socially good and sustainable book-themed project. Shockingly, we found that research reveals that around 320 million books end up in landfill sites every year. Yes, that is a staggering number of books that could be recycled or given to others. To address this, we drew inspiration from platforms like Thriftbooks.com and each of our local libraries that collect used books for resale or redistribution.

The Idea

We envisioned a space where you could upload their used books, get free used books, and earn points towards discounted prices or a free new book from partnered bookstores (i.e. Barnes and Nobles) all in one online forum.

This is how the idea for BOOKS FOR HUMANITY was born!

Connecting Book Lovers Worldwide

BOOKS FOR HUMANITY **serves as a global community that connects book lovers from all over the world, just like our diverse team members. On our website, users can **upload pictures of their books from the comfort of their homes. Their books can be added to a cart or favored by another user. Likewise, users can explore the large collection of books and add books to their carts or favorites.

Users are not charged a bill to get the books when they add them to their cart. They are asked to input their shipping address and other shipping-required information.

Earning Points and Discounts

Just as any book lover, nothing feels better than getting a nice new book for a discounted price or for free! Our point system allows users to earn points for each book they give away. These points can be redeemed for various discount amounts or, with enough points, users can get a free new book from our partner booksellers.

Challenges + Achievements

During the development of our website, we faced a couple of challenges. Time management was a significant obstacle as team members lived in various time zones. However, through everyone’s dedication and teamwork, we created a work-shift system that allowed us to make progress without burning out.

Additionally, our next challenge was more technical. Some team members were new or had little experience with certain platforms and frameworks we used, such as the REACT library. We overcame this by utilizing tutorial videos and articles to gain a deeper understanding.

Moreover, a notable achievement we had was creating our sign-up and log-in pages. We faced a lot of challenges with this aspect of the website but we eventually got it to function just like we wanted!

Building Friendship and Knowledge

Despite the challenges, we were able to preserve and overcome them. With support from each other and assistance, we all learned about new frameworks and platforms that we will later implement in our own future personal projects!

Building BOOKS FOR HUMANITY together brought us friendship and expanded our knowledge. We hope our website will foster the same sense of friendship and new knowledge among our users as they share and read books.

Join us as we promote sustainably, promote literacy, and the joy of reading. Together we can impact our world through BOOKS FOR HUMANITY!

Future Applications

In the feature, we hope to implement all the features (i.e. UI/UX design), include a database/ backend, and overall make it as close to what our FIGMA design looks like.

Built With

api
bootstrap
cs
figma
fontawesome-icons
github
google
html5
react
s-js
vscode

Submitted to

Citro Hacks 2023

Created by

I designed the the initial pages for signed in and signed out in the discover page, as well as the book information page design in Figma. I also worked on the Front-End of the website specifically the discover page. As I had previous experience with GitHub I helped out in any issues with setting up the Repo and other Git concerns. This was my first time using React, but I gained so much knowledge in the past few days!

Daniela Cuevas
During the hackathon, I worked on a few important tasks. First, I used the Google Books API to get book information for our website. It was really cool to make the book details show up dynamically. I also created the sign-in and sign-up pages to make it easy for users to create accounts and log in. To make everything look nice, I designed the website using Figma. This was my first time participating in a hackathon and using React, and I had a lot of fun learning and working on the project.

Maan Patel
I worked on the front-end of the website. Specifically, I worked on the navigation bar, the About Us page and the Login page. I also worked on the slides for the presentation. This was my first hackathon and also my first time using React, so it was a great learning experience.

Alexia Ntantouri
I did the Cart page and helped to edit the About Us page by adding the team members profile pictures and a statement about our app. I also helped with much of the Figma designs, as well as the write up for the Devposts.

Christiana Alapa