Inspiration
COVID-19 has impacted many people financially and reduced their available resources due to the closure of community centers and other public places. Since we’re unable to help the less fortunate in ways that we were previously able to, we were inspired to create something digital that could help others. Our app aims to do this by providing the less fortunate with clothes during these difficult times.
What it does
Hand Me Down is an app that connects people with extra clothes to those in need within a nearby area. Receivers, which are those looking to get clothing will be able to filter out options by size and gender, and swipe through them to look for items that they like. Swiping left will cycle to a new option, and swiping left will show additional details and contact info which will help you collect your new item. Donors can add pieces of clothes to the database, and remove when they’ve arranged a giveaway.
How we built it
Our app was built using Flutter along with Dart because of its ability to rapidly prototype and build for both iOS and Android. We also created a back-end with Node.js, Express.js, and connected it to MongoDB using Mongoose.
Challenges we ran into
We found it extremely difficult to work with Flutter’s state management system which meant that we focused on building parts of our idea that didn’t require state management. Specifically, the difficulty with state management meant that we didn’t connect our app to our back-end. Also, we found it difficult to use plugins like the Google Maps plugin and the Image Picker plugin and we decided to focus on other parts of our app for the prototype.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re extremely proud of our image slider where users can either swipe right or left based on their preference for the clothing. This feature is important because it allows donors and recipients to be easily matched, based on the recipients purposes. It was important to us that recipients are able to find items that they would like as we believe that it is an important aspect of clothes donations that is often overlooked.
What we learned
For most of our team, it was our first time using Flutter and we didn’t have much experience in mobile app development. We learnt how to use these tools and also learnt how to use Figma while gaining experience in sharing code through Git.
What's next for Hand Me Down
We would like to implement the backend integration for our app as well as integrate our app with an authentication service. Also, we would like to find a way to prevent our app from being abused. Furthermore, we would like to expand our marketplace to be for all essential goods, not just clothes.
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