Trip Sharing Platform — Jingya Wu

Trip Sharing Platform

Background

This project was raised initially to solve the problem of tracking national parks that the client has visited. Later on the client expended the problem to a trip sharing platform through which users can create, share, and complete lists of places to visit and is not limited to national parks any more. The final deliverable should be a fully functional platform that can be used to log and share places as well as potentially creating lists of places for users to interact and compete with each other.

Executive Summary

To solve the problem identified above, I propose that the solution should at least be a mobile app, and ideally also a web application to complement the mobile version. The mobile app should include location service to enable users to check in at different places. The app also need to integrate Google Maps and utilizes its APIs to retrieve popular places, as well as allowing users to login through their Facebook and/or Gmail accounts so that they can interact with their friends much easier. The mobile version is necessary because users need to check-in at places they visit, and we cannot expect them to bring a laptop wherever they go. The web application can complement the mobile app to provide a better exploring and viewing experience of trips and lists created by others. The basic structure of this application for both the mobile end and the web will include: a database for users’ account information, back-end algorithms to display the most relevant places/lists, as well as a clean and user-friendly front-end interface that can attract users as a new application.

Viability Analysis

This project will be built from scratch, meaning that as a team we need to decide on what languages and frameworks to use, and thus must keep in mind the current knowledge of all team members as well as the learning curve of learning new stuff. This is especially relevant to this project since we might need to develop on Android, iOS, and web, and this can be challenging. I am experienced in Android and web development, but not with iOS. Even though picking up Swift does not seems to be too difficult right now, we still need to keep in mind the time that is required for learning a new language.

Risks and Rewards

Currently there is no existing way to track and share places visited. This application can promote the travelling industry as travelling can become more rewarding for some people when they have a checklist to complete or when they are competing with someone else. This application, if in good use, can also give visitors to a local village good recommendations on what are the good attractions and/or restaurants to visit. This can lead to risks when places are trying to advertise through this app, and this risk can be minimized by creating a rating system for places lists and users who are publishing the lists, and by implementing an algorithm that recommends valuable lists wisely.

Closing

Overall, this is a fantastic idea and is reasonable to implement given the time and resources constraints. With the proposed features (places logging and sharing, list creating, etc) and external resources (Google Maps, Facebook, Google account) integrated, I can see a successful product that nothing else in the market has in common.

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