Unio

Network is Net Worth. Unio is a web-based social media aimed at allowing small to medium-sized enterprises collaborate and help each other to grow in a rapidly developing economic world.

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Inspiration

The inspiration for Unio comes from the UN's 8th Sustainable Development Goal, more specifically their target numbered 8.3, which a part of it focuses heavily on the formalization and growth of small to medium sized enterprises. In a rapidly developing and globalised world, it has become increasingly harder for SMEs to compete with the high-rise enterprises of the business world. With such a competitive market, SMEs often lack the capital, network, and skills to grow their businesses effectively and advance their economic progression. This leads to a stunted local economy. Therefore, it is important that SMEs are given the opportunities to enhance their capabilities so that they are able to grow in their respective markets. Unio aims to provide SMEs these opportunities, to collaborate and learn with or from other SMEs, so as to increase their chances of achieving economic prosperity.

What it does

Unio is a social platform tailored for SMEs, that allows them to connect with other SMEs around the world. Unio has 3 main features:

  1. Exploration of various SMEs around the world Unio allows a user SME to search through other various SMEs from different markets to possibly collaborate with, allowing them to find SMEs that they may not have found before. Unio also allows SMEs to market themselves by giving the ability for them to share the various projects or work that they have done. With an AI-personalised feed, our exploration features are further enhanced.

  2. Direct collaboration between SMEs When an SME has found another SME which they are interested in collaborating with, the user can simply press the "COLLABORATE" button, which prompts Unio to a page with a pre-templated email to send to the contact of the other SME. All the user SME has to do, is to change the various details to their likings and hit send, to automatically send an email for collaboration.

  3. An empowering skills hub Other than these collaborative features, Unio offers the ability for SMEs to share their knowledge and skills to others. SMEs may write articles in Unio regarding various topics that may help others alike grow their businesses. After which, these articles can be accessed through Unio's skills hub, so that SMEs can increase their skills for better growth.

How we built it

Unio was built using a combination of technology:

  • Front-end: React JS and Material UI
  • Back-end: Firebase for authentication and database, Supabase for storage bucket, EmailJS for email messaging
  • AI: For personalised algorithms

Challenges we ran into

  • Minimal experience: Our team is quite new to hackathons, and so it was quite a challenge at the start of the hackathon with us figuring out our priorities for the project.
  • Limited capabilities: Certain features of web technology that we wanted to use were not free, which meant we had to find alternative ways for certain functions, such as the storage bucket.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Despite the many challenges we ran into, we are proud of finishing the Unio on time. Creating a functional social platform is not easy to do in the timeframe given. We are also proud that we're able to have so many different features of Unio, runs in cohesion with one another to truly achieve what we aimed for when we started creating Unio. Features such as all the profile editing, the collaboration button, the posts, and the Skills Network took lots of time and had many trial and errors to get working, so the fact that at the end of the day we were able to finish them ought to make us proud.

What we learned

During the creation of Unio, learnt the lesson of the importance of better planning and managing. To create a social platform with many different features, it is vital that we ensure no features clash with one another, or the code of one feature prevents the other from working. As such, we were required to plan our project ahead, to get a list of all the features and work that needed to be done. As we incorporated LiveShare to code Unio together, it also prompted us to coordinate our codes and to delegate all the tasks.

What's next for Unio

We hope that after this, Unio can still continue to expand as a social platform, and extend its reach so that SMEs all around the world are able to enjoy its features. We also wish to add even more features or polish up the currently existing ones, including:

  • An in-app messaging function to allow easier collaboration between SMEs
  • A built in article-reader instead of uploading PDFs, and the ability to customise articles in the Skills Network

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