Whisper Care

Inspiration

With a total number of 8 billion people in the world, 15% of the world population live with a disability, most being woman, and it is still mind-boggling that only 4% of beauty and personal care brands that create products that cater for the disabled

In the U.S alone 3.44% of the population has some kind of visually impairment, which makes it difficult to independently access and interact with beauty products by themselves

Time and time again, they are dependent on a companion or a store clerk to most often describe the information of the product they seek, to give their candid opinion on said product or most often to guide them to a particular products

This should be the case at any rate, and this is where we come in They should be meaningful inclusive efforts to cater for this needs but not only limited to the visually impaired but inclusive for all

Whisper care hopes to deliver an inclusive package able to assist the visually disabled with their online or in-shop experience, giving them the ability to shop and access a wide range of beauty products more conveniently and independently

What it does

Whisper care is an assistive user-friendly mobile application for both android and IOS, with the UX/UI and features primarily to cater for the visually impaired which uses*text-to-speech* for better access to in the beauty industry, be it online or in-person experience

We achieve this by working with beauty and personal care products by placing our unique QR codeon their products which marks it with a verified identity on our database before shipping out to the store worldwide

• These unique QR codes can be scanned to get the full audio information of the product e.g. Description, Usage, allergens

• We have come up with a verification process to leave audio reviews after purchase of a product, using an OTP system which uses a 5 digit code on your receipt and also sends to your email/sms.

• You can listen to audio reviews for a more detailed, humane and genuine experience given from people who have used the product

• On the mobile app there is an in-store directional feature that guides and directs users to the specific product they are searching for in the store using a 3D model of the participating stores for better mapping and direction, by simply asking our voice assistant whisper, and in turn whisper uses previous scan data from other users and also previously recorded inventory data from the store to locate the product in real-time.

• As Visually/physically impaired people can not see or touch the fine details as this is important when shopping for beauty products from a 3rd party site(amazon, wish and jumia) or perhaps even getting/borrowing in-person, to avoid counterfeit or fake products, our QR code is unique to each and every product and can not be duplicated as it will be detected upon scan, it serves as a protection system for the brand and consumer, which can be scanned to see the badge of authentication. This will greatly help the disabled to get authentic beauty products

• We also have a feedback feature that allows us to get useful insights from users which can be used to integrate more inclusive features for a wide-range of disabled people.

How we built it

First off, the entire team brainstormed about the objective at hand, how we could make beauty products more accessible for the visually disabled, and from the sparks of critical thinking we berthed our solution WHISPER CARE. We then conducted our research and took surveys from visually impaired to find out their struggles in accessing beauty product and what features would like to make a visit to a beauty store easy, we also took into account data from various verified sources off the internet.

The UI was taken into consideration when building, we delivered an easy-to-navigate design which would in turn aid the UX

Afterwards, we walked our way up to the different features our solution would possess, so using our previous studies, research and surveys. we came up and developed the following;

• Unique bar codes to scan for information of the product

• A verification process to record an audio review

• Audio reviews.

• Locating products in store using data from previous past scans of different people and recorded inventory.

• Authentication badge to disrupt counterfeit products upon scan, as the visually impaired can not really tell.

• Feedback feature to improve our application by matching with disabled people and getting valuable insights from them

It was built out using the following;

• Frontend - HTML, CSS, Javascript and React

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge we were up against was coming up with a solution that was viable and easy to use for both the companies that we would be working with and the visually impaired who would be using the solution. At the end of the day, we hammered down of what features were essential to be included in our solution, at least for now.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Built out innovative system that allows blind or partially sighted individuals to shop more independently and browse at a leisurely pace

• Completing the hackathon with amazing team mates

• Positive feedback from the visually impaired that agreed to take our survey

• Ideating a solution that could potentially become a successful startup

• Helping solve a gap which has been ignored for far too long in the beauty industry

What we learned

At whisper care we are a small humble group of 4 all working remotely from each other during the course of this project.

I think time management and team collaboration were fundamental in what we learnt, as we were all in school doing part-time jobs while also handing this project.

Also helped us to see what disabled people struggle with in their everyday life through out the entire development process and why it's important to build ecosystems with inclusive tech and accessibility being a top priority.

We got introduced to new technologies which improved our tech background and knowledge.

What's next for Whisper Care

We would be working on pushing a final product into market while also integrating loads of other cool inclusive features not only for the visually impaired, but for more disabled people to enjoy and interact with.

We consider ourselves disruptors and seeing that there is still more room to be improved on, we can not wait to move ahead with whisper care.