##voluntr is the app that is essential for the future of service work, making finding volunteer opportunities easy, fast, and accessible to everyone. We saw a deficit in our own school, recognizing that regulating community service requirements and credits using only paper was not only disorganized, but environmentally wasteful. With this app, we make logging credits much simpler (no more long paper forms) as well as 'gameifying' finding service opportunities fast and accessible, either swiping through or mapping the work by location to make getting there easier.
##We really wanted to incorporate how social community service can be, bringing in popular aspects of many social media apps. We have the home page scrolling through like an Instagram feed, the voluntr wrapped like Spotify, 'swiping right' like Tinder, and the name itself resembling tumblr. We wanted to bring back that community service is not just a 'requirement' for students, but is a really fun extracurricular.
##Our app starts with signing into your account (using Face ID or typing in your password), which is made through a PHP server (and is available anywhere from any iOS device with the app), and in this account you can save organizations and service work that you are interested in. You can set the number of service hours that you would like to complete, how many hours you have currently completed, which organizations you have worked with, and using a trend analysis we have an annual review of your service work that year. With this annual review (think ‘Spotify Wrapped’) we display things like your total number of hours completed this year, your percentage of your goal reached, the number of organizations you joined, and the organization you volunteered at for the longest amount of time this year. We are in the process of making a "voluntr soulmate", which using a simple trend analysis, we analyze your work each year, and pair you up with another user whose service interests align with yours. You are paired with the person who had the most shared affiliated organizations.
##Once a user joins a school or organization, that community can post to everyone in that community new announcements or service opportunities. These posts can be things like a reminder to complete service credits, or it could be announcing an achievement of a member of your community. We also establish a ‘posting feature’ in which an organization can add a new service opportunity to our database for users to view. This is in the form of a survey which automatically is added to our database and as soon as the organization hits submit, it is accessible to users. These sorts of announcements can also be viewed in our Instagram-like bulletin board on the home page. Users can scroll through announcements and opportunities like social media. We also created the main feature of the app to be ‘swiping right’ on service work, as users can swipe right to join a service organization, and swipe left if that particular organization does not interest them. The profile for the organization shows things like the title, job description, eligibility requirements, and easy access to the organization's website.
##We also make sure that the location of the service work is accessible to users, to encourage the participation in community service. We implemented a map feature that geolocates the service opportunities on a map so that users can search for work by proximity. Your location is marked with a pink pin, and the locations of the service work are marked with black pins to see where you are in relation to the work. We wanted to make sure that community service is as accessible as possible, and that service work’s location is not a hindrance from users to helping the community. You can also share service opportunities via this map with this button.
##The app is engineered towards students and schools, but it is usable by all types of organizations and communities. We hope to implement this app in our own school, so that we no longer have to use paper forms and build up a lack of excitement for completing service requirements due to inaccessibility of combing through the internet. We localized all of the information, made it easy to track your progress, and gamified lots of aspects so that young people are excited to use our app.
##Future steps for this project is adding a calendar for users to plot out when they volunteer, and significantly expanding the database. Voluntr is an XCode App for the iOS store, with full, perpetually updating information and sign-in capabilities, ready to be put on the app store. The database is on a PHP server, linked to XCode using mySQL. Feature include geolocation, Face ID, and completely original graphics and logos. It was especially challenging to be using so many languages in such a short amount of time, but it was super fun! Hope you enjoy!