Requestify

Creating the Devpost

Define some of your most challenging moments. What made them challenging?

One of our first challenging moments was figuring out exactly how to take on the task of creating an app that would include all of the features and intricacies we had in mind. Our team was unsure of where to start, and this led to extensive planning instead of jumping into action and solving problems as we faced them during the app development process. Another challenge we faced when we first got started was coordinating our schedules and planning the best times we could work on building the app together. Because all of our members were busy at different times, we had to work around our commitments and figure out a way to put aside time for this project. Although it took time in the beginning, we soon improved our collaboration efforts as we continued working through the process. Lastly, we struggled to connect the passwords/usernames to individual requests, as they are stored as singular profiles. However, if we wanted people to be able to donate then every individual needed to be able to access all of the request options through one account. These challenges made our group stronger, as we had to find new solutions to both our technical and nontechnical issues as a team.

What soft skills did your team utilize that helped you overcome obstacles? Name and describe at least three.

The main soft skills that our team utilized were communication, adaptability, and attention to detail. Our members showed consistent communication throughout every step of the app development process, making sure decisions were being made as a team and distributing the workload evenly. Because of our varying schedules, we needed to show adaptability and accommodate each members’ busy schedule while still making progress on our app. We planned for different members to work on it with at least one other member so we could check each other's work and improvise for solutions in a team effort. Lastly, we utilized attention to detail many times throughout the app development process because it was highly important to us that our app was engaging and easy to navigate for a user. Moreover, the colors, graphics, and other visual aspects of our app were chosen carefully and well thought out to create the best experience for our potential users. All of these skills were crucial for us to maintain an encouraging and productive environment where we came together and worked towards a shared goal.

How did your team demonstrate and utilize diversity and inclusivity (i.e., race/ethnicity, gender, neurodiversity, age, culture, language, subject area of expertise) to develop your app?

Our team made it one of our main focuses to utilize diversity and inclusivity while developing our app because we have the gender diversity that is important for considering solutions that would potentially help women and all individuals in women’s shelters and homeless shelters gain access to a more sustainable source of menstrual health and personal care products. Our team is passionate about bridging the gap of social and financial inequalities for women starting with period poverty, and coming from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds, we have a better understanding of why this is such a prevalent issue around the world. Additionally, each of our team members has a different skill set, which made the app creating process more collaborative as we took up various roles. While some of our members excelled in programming and app building, others focused on the graphic design and video editing aspects of the project. These diversified skills and backgrounds made our app a product of our identities and values, as well as our shared ideas as a team.

Inspiration

Period poverty is the lack of safe access to menstrual products and sanitation facilities due to financial or social constraints. It is an overlooked issue that over 500 million women around the world experience. Particularly homeless women and individuals in shelters struggle to obtain personal care and menstrual health products, as they are one of the least donated items to shelters despite the high demand. Especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, funding for many shelters has been cut and resources have been stretched thin. Currently, the best way to help these individuals in need is to contact local homeless shelters and women’s shelters, ask what products they need, and donate supplies that could be useful. However, this approach will only provide shelters with general products once in a while that may not sustainably fulfill the personal needs of each individual there.

What it does

With Requestify, we can directly connect people in shelters with people who are able to cater to those specific needs through the shelter they reside at. Our app is a personalized system of requesting and fulfilling that is easily accessible and a more efficient way for the public to see how they can help. It also aims to reduce the strain on these shelters that are struggling to provide supplies and support to its residents. It consists of two roles: the requester and the fulfiller. Requesters are individuals in these shelters that can upload a request of the specific item they need through the shelter’s account and input details like quantity and item needed. Fulfillers are people who can purchase the items requested and drop them off at the shelter for the person who requested it. They will be able to see the requests they can fulfill on their homepage and the requests they have chosen to sponsor on their home screen, which is different from the requester home screen. Fulfillers can choose to donate a part of a request while not fulfilling the entire request at once. On the Requester account homepage, they will see whether their request has been pledged by the quantity being gradually reduced to 0.

How we built it

Our team used MIT App Inventor to build the app and to store information we integrated Firebase and TinyDB.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of developing a functional app that would effectively connect the public to shelters that require assistance in providing specific personal care products. We are proud of developing an app that could function on multiple devices at once, and successfully using an online database to store requests and differentiate accounts.

What we learned

Learning how to work in a team on such an important project over a long period taught us the importance of distributing work evenly between team members. At one point, one person would be overwhelmed with the amount of work they had to fulfill, so they would voice their concern and we would distribute the work further. For our app, we learned how to incorporate everyone's ideas and features, so that the app would reflect everyone's distinct perspective.

What's next for Requestify

Our team enjoyed creating this app and the idea behind so we want to be able to pursue this app further by partnering with both women's and homeless shelters in our area. In the future, we hope to add a feature that would allow users to give monetary donations to shelters, for convenience purposes.