Bare Necessities

Full Logo
Dashboard Page
Leaderboard Page
Profile Page
Match Settings Page

Inspiration

Over the past few months, we've noticed more and more people feeling guilty after spending their money. Whether it be Doordash-ing a meal or ordering a useless product on Amazon, it seems that almost everyone who spends money spontaneously regrets it shortly thereafter. In order to attack this problem, we realized that we need to provide users with incentives to make split-second decisions in favor of spending less money. Whether it be social validation or some other metric, we needed to make sure that people were pushed towards spending less.

What it does

Bear Necessities is a platform that allows users to read the story of their spending through data visualizations while also competing with similar users in seeing who can spend less money. The Dashboard of Bear Necessities contains graphs to help users digest their spendings so they're well-informed in making their next spending decision while the Leaderboard allows users to gauge other, similar users' spending habits. When a user logs in, they are prompted with 6 input fields which are then used as factors to determine 9 other similar users to create a clan. For 3 months, this clan stays together and sees how every member spends their money. The Leaderboard updates daily, incentivizing clan members to spend the least amount of money as possible. We hope that the insights gained by the Dashboard along with the incentives that come with the Leaderboard pull users away from useless spending and help them understand what their Bare Necessities are.

How we built it

We used a React.JS, CSS, and ChakraUI front-end with a JS library to generate the charts. We simulated fake users in order to showcase what the website would look like with real data so you can see what a working product would look like.

Challenges we ran into

One of the biggest challenges we ran into was deciding on what features were absolutely necessary. Due to the nature of this hackathon, we only wanted to pursue features at the core of the idea and not overload ourselves with any more. At the end, we were able to draw the line at the right place and implement the features that were essential to the concept. Another challenge was to get the transaction data until we found the Plaid API, which can be used to track users' spending if connected. We decided to leave out the implementation, again, due to time restraints but leave it as the recommended avenue to pursue.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the design and overall look of the finished product. We think it looks polished and clean while also maintaining modern stylistic features. Not only the design, but just the fact that 3 of us were able to create something so cohesive in 10 hours is remarkable. Additionally, working around roadblocks together is definitely something we’re proud of.

What we learned

One of the biggest things we learned was to avoid feature creep. When you first get an idea, especially a good one, you often start firing away features left and right. You imagine that you can implement them all. Unfortunately, due to the time limitations of this competitions, this is simply not possible. This models the real-world limitations of time or even budget to which all companies must heed. Once a company accepts the reality of the situation, they boil down their never-ending list of features to the ones that are at the core of the concept. This is exactly what we did when we recognized there was no way to implement all of the desired features. We truly believe that this skill is crucial in the real world and are grateful to have encountered it in the competition.

What's next for Bear Necessities

In the future, we plan on increasing the incentives tied to being number 1 on the Leaderboard by throwing in perks such as being able to change the Clan’s name, leaderboard theme, or even give yourself a crown over your leaderboard icon. These are just more ways to push people towards spending less. We also aim to implement a F.I.R.E section to help users plan their retirement early. FIRE stands for Financially Independent, Retire Early. This part of the website would allow users to set a goal age of retirement and find out how their spending habits would need to change in order to get to their goal. This is yet another incentive for users to save more as they can plan for early retirement by making little decisions and sticking to their Bare Necessities.