clusters

Inspiration

We wanted to take our opportunity at SBU Hacks to develop technology that empowers local communities and facilitates smooth interactions between those who call for help and those who provide it.

What it does

We have developed an application that incentivizes individuals to support local volunteer organizations and bring their local communities closer, hence the name "cluster." We have created a virtual resource called Merit, which we will delegate to official organizations as a function of the demand for the services they provide. In an emergency where the need for volunteers is unusually high, we would increase an organization's flow of Merit to further encourage our volunteers to help where they are most needed. The organizations then delegate Merit to the volunteers who answer their requests. With this Merit resource, users can then create their own requests for their local community members to fulfill.

How we built it

We wanted to build a mobile app as it is more accessible and easy to use. We decided to build a messaging, feed-like, and leaderboard to bring users closer and showcase the most achieving heros in the area. We choose flutter to build our mobile application as we can deploy on Android, IOS, and Web with only one code base. To authenticate the users, we used the Firebase auth feature. We used getstream.io API to build asynchronous messaging features. We call the stream API when the user is registered. We choose to store our messaging data in stream.io as it is easy to access and filter the data. As steam can not store custom datatypes, We had to be creative and build our database mapping users to their zip codes. We used google API to get users' zip codes. We used MongoDB as our database and wrote the whole backend function in the flask framework. We build a serverside website so that the organization can add points remotely to the users. The website is built in HTML/CSS and connected to the flask server.

Challenges we ran into

Problem: Firebase does not have a feature to store user locations. Solution: Our group created a custom database with MongoDB to map users'' locations with data from firebase. Problem: Creating a system for our virtual resource which controls the flow to our user base while remaining within our project's goal. Solution: Carefully consider the effect different supply dynamics would have on resource circulation, and create a solution after monitoring cash flow dynamics with simulated users.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Merit economy Our UI can run on both android and ios and on web First time building a full-stack application.

What we learned

We have learned to work cohesively as a team and use each other's unique expertise to refine our final product. Also, this is the first time many of us have been able to participate in this kind of project. This opportunity has allowed us to prove to ourselves that we are capable of building a working application within 48 hours.

What's next for clusters

Currently, to maintain scarcity, all gigs operate at a 60% exchange rate. For example, completing a gig for another user will reward you 300 merit, while 500 merits will be deducted from the user who posted the request. We do this to keep volunteering the most lucrative way to earn Merit from a macroeconomic standpoint, as volunteering always returns a 100% transfer rate. Implementing a gamified account status structure (Standard, Gold, Platinum) to utilize a tiered transferring system improving the transfer rate for ch Use machine learning to create curated experiences for volunteers based on their previous contributions, thus boosting volunteer retention. We are working with actual volunteer organizations to create a network of opportunities for our users to give back. We are establishing genuine sponsors to provide rewards in our store and working with a carrier to ship these goods.