2nd Santa

A compilation of our Figma whiteboard with low, mid, and high fidelity screens
Brainstorming and sketches of our platform

💡 Inspiration

With Christmas coming during our hackathon, we thought about how different this year’s Christmas is. As a group, we discussed how depressing this holiday is because of the financial burden the pandemic has placed on us, as well as the increasing prices from the supply chain issue. Mass production and over consumption has also caught our attention, so we wanted to create a sustainable Christmas. We realized that we could combine the magic of giving gifts with sustainable shopping by allowing users to purchase from various second hand and environmentally friendly products on one app. Additionally, we wanted users to have the option of selling their own 2nd hand items for any price they want to promote giving and giving items a 2nd life.

❓ What it does

2nd Santa connects users to all 2nd hand and sustainable online markets to reduce waste during the holidays
Allows users to create designated lists for people they would like to give gifts, each list includes in-app items available for purchase. This makes it easy for users to categorize what they can get for their loved ones in the future.
With users selling their gently used items, our platform provides budget-friendly gifts so everyone can be included in the gift-giving holidays!
Brings users together to help each other in making and trading affordable gifts
With our platform focusing on sustainable, handmade, and second-hand items, we are making a new norm that gifts DO NOT have to be brand new!

⚙️How we built it

We started off by making flowcharts and rough sketches of what we thought the homescreen, shopping icons, camera, and item purchases to look like (so we can be on the same page as each other)
Each teammate created a low-mid fidelity mockup of each screen before coming together as a group to decide on which screens to use in the final prototype

🔥 Challenges we ran into

Since we were in two different time zones, it was difficult to come together as a team to make decisions.
We had the most trouble building out the home screen and debating where to put the CTA button for users to post their listing (item they want to sell)
It was also troubling working with the limited 3D illustrations we had because there aren’t many free options available
Trouble with working with the UI design to ensure a balance between readability, entertaining interactivity, and aesthetics
Constantly asking ourselves “how much is too much to add this aspect for festivity and theme purposes?”

🎉 Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to create a winter holidays themed gift shopping app within a limited timeframe
Working efficiently to ensure we have time to ourselves during the holidays
Bringing the world closer together by guiding users to help each other out during the holiday season

😮 What we learned

“We learned to realize how such a big holiday such as Christmas can be environmentally damaging so with sustainability being more prevalent for consumers, our team decided to tackle one of the biggest holidays. I learned to consider how people tend to buy things that go unused and instead of keeping it in the closet, it can be useful for someone else. Another thing is learning to work with bright colors that oppose each other such as green and red. I learned to consider mellowing places here and there in order to avoid seeming too busy due to 3D graphics.” –Jenny
“We learned how to integrate 3d icons/elements with a 2d layout. Even though there was a very limited amount of 3d christmas icons, we were able to adapt by cropping and recoloring existing icons to match our overall color scheme. I learned how to use figma plugins to create smartphone mockups.” –Samihah
“With this hackathon, I allowed myself to be more free with designing and not worry so much about accessible colors as usual. I focused on the UI design part more and learned from the other two designers in my team how to fill up the space creatively. This was my first time working with 3d graphics and it was tough to work around with as there aren’t many free ones out there. I learned to balance the complexity of the 3d graphics with simple layouts so it wouldn’t overstimulate the users’ eyes. This also goes along with the copywriting. I tried to keep it conventional to have users understand our platform, while also keeping it Christmasy so our platform stays within the holiday theme.” –Crystal

✨ What's next for 2nd Santa

We hope to extend the UI prototype to include more detailed user profiles and to include a feature that allows users to find small businesses near them
Eventually, we plan to create a website version of 2nd Santa to make it more accessible to laptop/desktop users
Allowing the user to edit the countdown date that leads up to a special event they want to buy gifts for (i.e. birthdays, anniversaries, valentine’s, etc.) and applying themes to each change!