LendIt

Inspiration

What is the one thing college students love more than anything else? Free stuff.

Many students have random things that they are not using. This ranges from college supplies like textbooks or iClickers to personal items such as video games or books. Others want or need these items, but are forced to buy them since they aren’t able to get them free. We aim to increase the affordability and sustainability of college by enabling easy access to the borrowing and lending of these items.

What it does

LendIt is a web application that connects UMass students who want to lend items with those who need them in two ways. The first is by making a borrow request, which allows a user to request an item that they require. The second is a lend offer, which allows people to put up items they aren’t currently using. People can click on these requests or offers and get the contact information to arrange the borrowing. Through encouraging the sharing of items, LendIt both lessens the cost of college for students, and also promotes reusability.

How we built it

We divided our team into front-end and back-end developers, and used the MERN stack in order to complete the web application. In the front-end, we used Figma for website design, and then used React to implement the design. In the back-end, we used MongoDB to store our data, and used Express to implement an API.

Challenges we ran into

Overall, this project was challenging for our team. Without much meaningful experience in web development, we encountered many technical problems that did not have immediate answers. For instance, our back-end developers had trouble synchronizing their systems with the front-end developers, and we had to ask for mentor help multiple times. In addition, we were under a lot of pressure due to time constraints. Learning to operate under this pressure while maintaining a positive attitude was a challenge as well.

What we learned

We learned how to implement various technologies such as React, Node.js, MongoDB, Auth0, and Express. In addition, we learned how to collaborate and synchronize with people who were working on different parts of the project than us; we quickly found that version control would be a crucial tool for us. We also learned the importance of strong brainstorming sessions. Periodically getting together as a group and drawing out ideas and solutions was very helpful.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team composed of all first-year students, we each came with very diverse backgrounds with coding. Although most of us know languages like Python and Java, our project involves new technologies that the majority of us had no prior experience with. We had to teach ourselves to be able to create a complete website, which was a huge accomplishment for us. Additionally, we were faced with deprivation of sleep, food, and exercise because we all desired to put our best effort into this project. We are proud of our perseverance as well as collaboration skills as a team.

What’s next for LendIt

Account verification

We would ask users for their UCard number to authenticate that they are UMass students. This also helps discourage people from just stealing items. In addition, we would add a Your Items page associated with the account. This would help users keep track of current items that they are borrowing and lending.

LendCoins

LendCoins would be a website currency that would encourage people to lend their items out. When a person starts a LendIt account, they get 10 free LendCoins. Users can use LendCoins to borrow items. When users lend items by either fulfilling borrow requests or lending in-demand items, they would gain LendCoins. In addition, we would offer users the opportunity to buy LendCoins.

Testing on UMass students and potentially students at other colleges

After the implementation of our web application, we would want to test it to make sure it’s actually viable. To do this, we want to first test it among UMASS students, and then gradually expand our audience to students at other universities.