College students have to purchase new textbooks each semester. This process is tedious, expensive, and long. Our service where students could buy, sell, rent, and trade textbooks with other students from their campus would provide an easier and cheaper alternative.
College students with limited resources who need to purchase textbooks and tired of buying overpriced books from publishers
Ages: 18-25
Occupation: Undergrad/Grad Student
Name: Harry
Background:
- Graduate Computer Science student @ IIT
- Prefers renting textbooks for short term usage
- Financial difficulties
- Needs to work to be able to afford his education and living expenses
- Have a lot of unused course materials
- Shipping and delivery services in his area are faulty Demographics:
- Age: 24
Goal: Find textbooks for a cheap price and can easily trade used materials.
How we can help:
- Provide a platform where Harry can find textbooks at the lowest price and not have to worry about shipping or shipping fees
- Can pick-up or hand deliver
- Price-checking
Name: Ashley
Background:
- Undergraduate Biological Engineering Student in Chicago
- Lives On-Campus
Demographics:
- Age: 18
Goal: Find a textbook in their area with a convenient and simple pick-up.
How we can help:
- Offer safe and student-friendly textbook handoff options with a map detailing the location of trade and how to get there from where you are
- User-friendly
- Can pick-up or deliver
- Can find books based on categories
- Map integrated
- School Administration and Staff.
- Publishers and textbook sellers
- Libraries
- Professors
Application Type
Mobile Application, provided on an Android platform.
Client Tech
Android: Android Studio writen in Java
Server Tech
Parse Platform
| Member | Languages | FE frameworks | BE frameworks | Databases |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aditya | Java, Python, C | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Sara | Swift, Objective-C, Java | Gradle | ~ | Parse |
| Lev | Java, Python, C++ | ~ | ~ | Parse |
| Phu | Java, Python | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Saad | JAVA, C++ | ~ | ~ | ~ |
| Michael | C++ | ~ | ~ |
- View available books to rent or purchase on your campus and nearby campuses
- Filter by price, condition, class, rent or buy
- Limited to maximum 25 mile radius
- Post textbooks -Preview material before buying -Chat with seller -Upload textbook selling post and pricing
- Misconduct reporting system -Customer Service -Return and refund options
- User authentication
- OAuth maybe? require hawk.iit.edu / iit.edu email
- Pick-up and drop-off. Allow temporary leave for breaktime.
- Map to see where textbook should be collected or dropped off
- System to allow both parties to agree on a time and place
- Must arrive within certain time of pick-up/drop-off (~10min)
- Options to allow annonymous transactions
- Options to allow contactless transactions
- Rate buyer/seller
Ashley is an IIT freshman from Kansas. She is really excited to start her college journey but the book-buying process is stressing her out. She needs many textbooks for her new classes, however, she doesn’t know the best way to get them. Textbooks from the publishers are very expensive and she doesn’t have any financial aid to cover these expenses. That is when she decided to find a better option. Her new friends recommended *app name. After she registered, she was able to find all of her textbooks on sale on IIT campus! These textbooks were in great condition and very affordable. Ashley made new friends, while purchasing these books. She is very relieved and will only use *app name moving forward.
Harry is an ambitious 24-year-old college student who is struggling to make ends meet. He works a part-time job at Starbucks and takes care of his 2 children. With the money he makes at his job, he can barely afford to put food on the table, let alone pay for brand new college textbooks. A friend suggests Harry buy used textbooks from fellow college students, but Harry is having trouble finding the textbook he needs. That is, until a student suggests an app designed to help students buy, sell and rent used textbooks. Harry downloads the app and immediately sells his old books. With the money he made, Harry was able to buy his used textbooks at no out-of-pocket cost. Download this app now.
Here's a walkthrough of implemented user stories. These videos depict our first version of Found It. Below, the top video shows a user signing up to, and the bottom video below shows a user posting a book listing.
| Name | Location | Time zone offset from Chicago (Chicago is 0 offset) |
|---|---|---|
| Aditya Meka | Chicago, IL (On Campus, Online) | 0 |
| Sara Fryzlewicz | Chicago, IL (On Campus, Online) | 0 |
| Lev Pesin | Chicago, IL | 0 |
| Phu Gia Trinh | Chicago, IL (On Campus, Online) | 0 |
| Saad Raees | Chicago, IL (On Campus, Online) | 0 |
| Michael Acosta | Chicago, IL (On Campus, Online) | 0 |
| Name | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 | Week 5 | Week 6 | Week 7 | Week 8 | Week 9 | Week 10 | Week 11 | Week 12 | Week 13 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aditya Meka | X | X | ||||||||||
| Sara Fryzlewicz | X | X | ||||||||||
| Lev Pesin | X | X | ||||||||||
| Phu Gia Trinh | X | X | ||||||||||
| Saad Raees | X | X | ||||||||||
| Michael Acosta | x | X |
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We will use Github for version control. Team-members will push their finished code to a branch to ensure the main branch remains bug-free.
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If we need to meet outside of class we have found a mutually agreeable time on:
- Thursday at 1PM
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If we need to meet outside of class we will use the following tool/tech for meetings:
- Discord
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When we are not meeting together we will use the following tool/tech for communications:
- Discord
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We will communicate respectfully in a professional manner. Discussions only. No arguing/name calling of any kind. Respect the ideas of each team member.
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We will divide work fairly. Each member will be responsible for the work they choose to be assigned to (based on their skillset). Each member should be assigned to one or more stories on the Kanban board.