Orbital 22 - FoodKakis
The Covid-situation over the past 2 years has ceased many forms of human interactions. As university students ourselves, the interactions and human connections that we encounter in school, be it through physical class or chance encounters, are all significantly reduced.
Hence, to encourage a more vibrant and interactive university culture, and to help fellow university students who are yearning for the opportunity to meet and connect with others, we would like to provide a digital platform, in the form of a mobile application, to allow students to do so, specifically over good food. Such meetups may serve the purpose of dating, forming professional connections, or simply for the joy of meeting new acquaintances. More details on the app will be provided subsequently.
At the current stage, the app will serve local universities and students as the main target audience first, but we are certainly looking to widen our reach in the future given the opportunity.
For users
- To empower individuals to forge meaningful connections and relationships over food
- To normalise the use of matchmaking services amongst the relatively conservative communities
For F&B outlets
- To serve as an effective marketing platform with efficient outreach, to help secure greater revenue
For the developers
- To ensure app is easy-to-use and caters to existing demands
- To monetise this platform through partnerships and offering subscription services in the future
Ultimately, we want to distinguish ourselves from mainstream dating apps through the inclusion of F&B recommendations and providing multiple modes to cater to demands for different kinds of interactions. Food and meaningful interactions will always be at the core of our business.
User’s Perspective:
-
As a student who wants to meet new people, go on a date or form corporate connections, I want to access a platform that facilitates these opportunities.
-
As a student spontaneously looking for a lunch buddy in school, I want to get matched quickly to another person available for lunch.
-
As a student who is uncomfortable with lunching with a randomly matched person that I have yet to interact with, I want to be able to choose and interact with the person before pre-arranging a meal with him.
-
As a student who might not be comfortable eating 1-to-1 with a new acquaintance, it would be great if I could bring my friend along.
-
As a student with dietary preferences, I want to indicate that in my profile and get matched with people craving the same type of food
-
As a foodie in search of good food options, I want to be able to browse the food selections available in school (menus, opening hours etc).
-
As a budget-conscious student, I want to be able to filter out the food options by their price range and view the current F&B promotions and discounts in school.
Admin’s Perspective:
-
As an administrator of the app, I want to be able to identify irresponsible users with frequent no-shows and impose penalties (credit / feedback system).
-
As an administrator of the app, I want to be able to collate data on the popularity of different F&B stores on campus, and on irresponsible/ disrespectful users.
-
As the developer of the app, I want to be able to partner with F&B stores to run promotional campaigns and generate profit from the app.
Kotlin
- We will be developing a native Android app on Android Studio using Kotlin. We chose to work on an Android app as Android takes up 71.59% of the Mobile Operating System Market Share. We selected Kotlin in alignment with Google’s shift toward Kotlin-First for Android Mobile Development. Kotlin is also backwards compatible with legacy Java code, enabling more flexibility in our app development.
Gradle
- Android Studio’s built-in build automation tool.
Firebase
- We will make use of Firebase Cloud Functions to conveniently implement our backend services without having to build them from scratch. It also provides us with the ability to scale up our project in the future. As a well-established service provided by Google, Firebase’s documentation is also readily available, making it easier for novice developers like us to implement our features.
CometChat UI
- We will make use of CometChat UI to implement our in-app chat functions.
- Download FoodKakis_MS3.apk here
- On your device, navigate to Settings > Applications > Unknown Sources > Click “Allow”
- Locate the APK and install the application
- Open FoodKakis app to test out the features