Inspiration
We initially started building an incentive based alarm clock that would charge the user if they did not complete the goal that they had created for themselves. However, we then decided to pivot towards a location based app that could track if the user reached the location that they had selected previously. We were inspired to create this application because our team has all struggled to go to the gym due to our busy schedules and extenuating circumstances. This application provides a way for us to increase the chance that our goals will be met due to the threat of financial repercussions.
What it does
PayUp leverages the power of social pressures and financial ramifications in order to increase the chance that user goals will be completed. Users have the capability to create and manage current and past goals, assign financial repercussions, and transfer money between friends on PayUp. This innovative system is supported by a geolocation feature that allows users to indicate the location that they will be at during the time of their goal. Then, if their phone’s location does not align with the location that they have previously indicated at the time that their goal is set for, they will incur whatever consequences they have inputted into the application.
How we built it
We used React-Native to build a mobile application incorporating stripe payments, geolocation, and database accessing. Stripe’s API is being used to send payments between two app users. Data pertaining to users, friends of users, and goals of users were all managed by Google's firebase, whose API we used to push and pull days to and from a database.
Challenges we ran into
We initially wanted to have multiple payment options that would allow users to donate to charities, transfer money into savings accounts and purchases exchange traded funds using Robinhood’s API if they incurred the specified consequences as a result of not completing their goal. However, integrated what was starting to look like three separate API's proved daunting, and cause us to push the scope of the project back and only use stripe's API.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Our biggest accomplishment from this application is the integration of the geolocation component with the rest of the app. We believe that the geolocation aspect of our design is innovative and was an efficient way to capture the attention of the audience.
What we learned
It’s important to stress that each member of our team gained unique knowledge during the course of development, as we always worked on different components of the application. However as a team, we learned how to think about and complete a project in 24 hours, all while avoiding complacency or unproductivity.
What's next for PayUp
Next we will expand the pages in our app to include more payment methods as well as the initial peer to peer network. Furthermore, we will update the GUI in order to be more user friendly. In addition, we will also increase the presence of graphs, so that the data is easily visualizable.
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