Proudly presented to you by Team Mailo.
In this modern era, the usage of delivery services to ship goods from one place to another is extremely common. In Malaysia, typically it will take several days or even up to a week for a parcel to arrive if it is a very long distance (especially interstate), otherwise the price is astronomical set by other delivery services that provide same-day delivery.
What if we can have the best of both worlds - LONG DISTANCE & FAST delivery at an unbelievably LOW COST?
Besides that, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the unemployment rate has increased and the usage of public transport in Malaysia has decreased drastically which pose a threat to the job security of bus drivers. Our system is able to provide job opportunities to the unemployed people as well as provide an added incentive for bus companies which can help ensure that the bus drivers will continue to have sufficient income.
Given the fact that the coaches in Malaysia that routinely move around the country have a fixed schedule, we take this as an opportunity to introduce our 24-hour delivery service. The context that we are focusing on is the storage compartment will always have vacant spaces, or even left completely empty in most coaches. Hence, instead of leaving the empty compartment as it is, we fully utilise it as a storage for all the parcels to be delivered from one place to another.
In conclusion, the core idea of the system is to provide delivery service that can transport parcels within 24 hours through a long distance with lower cost using coaches as our main mode of transportation.
A brief overview of the process:
- A user as a sender is able to create orders to send their parcel to anywhere they want throughout the country.
- Riders are assigned to pick up the parcel from the sender.
- The rider picks up the parcel and takes it to the nearest bus terminal. It is then stored at the counter.
- When the next bus arrives, the bus driver picks up the parcels from the counter and stores them in the luggage compartment.
- When the bus reaches its destination, the bus driver drops off the parcels at the counter.
- The sender is notified and he/she can choose the time slot to deliver the parcel to the receiver.
- A rider is assigned to pick up the parcel from the terminal and deliver it to the receiver.
Our system can be deployed as an app as well as a website. For the website, we have developed it using Javascript, Bootstrap framework and Node.js. Google Maps APIs implemented:
- Maps Embed API - interactive map that allows users to keep track of the parcel
- Places API - autocomplete for locations input when sender is making the order
- Geocoding API - to retrieve coordinates for the locations
- Distance Matrix API - to calculate the distance from one point to another so that the cost can be calculated, as well as display the estimated duration of the journey
- Directions API - to guide the riders to the assigned locations/terminals
As a group of first year students in Computer Science, we ran into a smorgasbord of difficulties that gave us several extra strands of grey hair.
Firstly, we had trouble coming up with an idea for a creative project. We pitched in our ideas and discussed as a group, in the end we decided to go with JIFFY Express as it is the first of its kind and we believe it is bursting with potential.
Next is definitely the challenges in developing the project. We are fairly new to developing actual websites or applications, hence we ran into a lot of errors. Fortunately, Google and Stackoverflow came to our rescue as always. Another big problem that we all faced is the problem of having a thousand tabs open in the browser. Due to this reason we had to limit several functions in our project that could otherwise have a complete implementation. It was tough!
We were also mildly panicking due to the time constraints. As we are all fairly new to hackathons, the fact that we have to present a full project with a working prototype and video seemed overwhelming. Thankfully we were able to collaborate smoothly with each other. We were in a Google Meet from dusk til dawn!
Honestly speaking, we are proud of what we were able to achieve in a short period of time. We were able to effectively assign tasks to each team member so that we can all work in parallel which sped up the progress efficiently. We were able to develop a full prototype of our project as an application and also deploy it as a website. Even though the actual implementation is not complete, we have truly done our best and pushed ourselves beyond limits.
We managed to pick up many useful skills such as developing a prototype with Figma. We managed to create an impressive-looking application with this platform and we believe you'll be blown away by it too!
Most importantly, we are proud that we have grown closer to each other in terms of friendship and teamworking which we believe is an extremely important asset for collaborating in future hackathons, projects and start-ups.
This hackathon has forced us to quickly learn and adapt to the intense and extreme coding environment. It was a rather steep learning curve, however we've pulled through by sacrificing a night of sleep.
We learnt how to use Figma for wireframing and to develop prototypes which polished our UI and UX design abilities. We have also worked together to learn and devise a business plan that takes into account the aspect of finance when it comes to implementing and deploying the actual project which we hope to see it realised one day.
Moreover, through developing the website we have definitely increased our knowledge in programming, web development in terms of front end and back end, using frameworks as well as utilizing the Google Maps API.
We believe our project has a lot of potential that can be beneficial to make a positive change in our society as one of our objectives focuses on tackling the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 by the United Nations (UN), which is to promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.
With sufficient development knowledge and funding, our project is 100% a feasible idea that can be deployed for real world usage.
We believe that JIFFY EXPRESS can be the pivotal piece of puzzle needed to bring our country’s logistic industry to greater heights in the near future. The novelty of JIFFY EXPRESS does not only contribute to the country’s welfare, but it will surely also attract many investors to boost the economy and infrastructure of the country, hence putting Malaysia back on track to be one of the global leading players in the logistic industry.