Favior

Inspiration

Being students, we were familiar with far too many situations wherein we would rather not eat than go get food. Ordering from popular restaurants in the area had significant delivery costs, to solve this problem we decided to create a platform where students were involved and benefited by providing favors to each other. Kindness and understanding between students is the driving force behind our idea. These values are crucial to the execution of Favior.

What it does

Student A can post a request onto the app (using 1 fbuck), this request can then be accepted by any other student on the app. Once student B accepts it, they get the food/commodity and deliver it to A. Once both parties confirm their satisfaction, student B gets 1 fbuck. After a certain number of these credits have been racked up they can be redeemed for different items or simply be used for delivery favors. User accounts are stored in a database and so are the transactions. To ensure safety, only the building location is given and not the room details. Furthermore, registration requires student number to ensure strangers cant access the network

How We built it

We created a windows-form based app. We first mapped the screens on paper and translated and linked them in visual studio using C# where required. We also set up a server using Azure and created a database to store information about our users and transactions. We also tried to make the user experience simple and clean for easier use.

Challenges I ran into

It was a new development environment for 3 of us who had never used visual studio before. Furthermore, we couldn't figure out how to calculate the fbucks transactions and the lack of multi-threadability made it even more challenging. It was also challenging to understand the tables and fields needed for the database.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of coming with the idea that benefitted students and gave them an ability to help out and get rewarded in return. Being able to develop the front-end seamlessly with little experience but willingness to learn felt really rewarding. We also were able to work together and optimize our workflow. Most importantly, we are happy to be able to create something which we weren't sure would be possible.

What I learned

To familiarize us better with the environment we are going to use and to not be afraid to ask for help when stuck

What's next for Favior

Increase security features, try to work out business opportunities with vendors, add payment features securely via the application and improve the UX design and possible expansion to other services on/off campus.