XChange

Inspiration

People are often times in a situation where they do not have what they need on them at the moment. It would therefore be convenient if people can ask anyone who is near that may be able to help out.

What it does

When someone is in immediate need of something (perhaps cash or a phone charger), he/she can request that for a certain price (likely via Venmo or another online payment option). This information will be sent as a notification to everyone who is in close proximity to this request, and the dashboard of these nearby people will correspondingly update. Someone can then tend to the request upon knowledge of where the requester is as indicated on the map. This provides a platform for more streamline and immediate product exchange for daily use.

How we built it

We used Swift to build this as an iOS app and Firebase for our database and server. We used the Google Maps API to retrieve data for the map and for the current location of the user.

Challenges we ran into

We originally wanted to use the Venmo API so that the app can support direct transactions via Venmo between the two parties (the requester and the offerer) but Venmo's API is no longer publicly available, so our next best option was PayPal, which was difficult for us to integrate. Instead, we veered more in the direction of providing the contact information of the requester as opposed to providing direct transaction within the app.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were successful in connecting the server and database with the front end, and in integrating the Google Maps API to show the current location of users. We were also successful in storing locations of users in the database and representing them accordingly in the interface of the app.

What we learned

This was the first time anyone on our team has touched iOS app building, so we learned a lot just about Swift and iOS. We also became a lot more familiar with the process of installing and integrating APIs.