FeedMore APP
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I hacked a couple of hours over one weekend to build this mobile App for a Richmond local charity - FeedMore and published it. This mobile App called . You can find it on Google Play Store. Why did I build it? I have a story to tell you.
I was new to Richmond at the time. I asked my friend's recommendation for a local charity to donate food to. He told me about the FeedMore. On one Saturday, I went out shopping for food donation and was ready to drive to donation bins to donate the food I bought. I tried to pinpoint the locations of donation bins close to me on the FeedMore website on my phone. It wasn't a pleasant experience. The site only has one page which has a list of bin locations written in text. Those addresses are not links, not mention they are not integrated with Google Maps. I copied the text and open the Google map and tried to guess which one is the closest bin to my current location. Eventually, I found one bin that was not too far and donated food.
When I was driving home, I was thinking if the donation experience is so frustrated, some people probably don't want to do it again. Is there a way to make this experience better? The answer is YES. While driving, I came up with the idea - a mobile App that shows locations of FeedMore's donation bins on a map when App is launched and people can click those little pins on the map to get direction and navigate to the location bins.
The same day when I went back home, I started coding. Before coding, I did short market research to see if there were already similar products or functions for FeedMore. I found none. So it's a GO for the project. I made the decision to build it in a couple of mins. It's a quick decision because nothing to lose. First, it's a great thing to help a local charity and there were no similar products out there for FeedMore. Second, it's low effort. I cut the scope of the project to two most important features - 1. display locations of FeedMore's bins on the map 2. integrate with Google map to navigate users when they click the pin on the map. I evaluated features and effort. I knew It was not going to be more than a 1-day effort for me. Third, it's always fun to transfer ideas to a real product.
The design for the App is quite simple. I love to keep it as simple as possible.
Product flow:
1. Launch the App
2. You will see all the red pins on the map representing all the locations of FeedMore bins.
3. Click one of the bins which you want to use to donate and you will see Google Map is opened and ready to navigate you.
4. You can also check the list view instead of the map view by clicking the list view on the top right corner.
5. You can checklist of the most needed donations items on the left bottom corner.
Done! Here you have it. You can use it to check out the closest bin locations to donate food to FeedMore on the go.
In order to increase the awareness of food donation to FeedMore and market this App, I sent out a communication email to the teams in our department regarding this App. Some of my friends in the company really enjoyed the App and used it while they went out for donations. I sent out an email to FeedMore and asked them to feel free to use it at no cost. I made the project open source. You can check it out at my GitHub repo .
If you want to learn more about it, let's catch up! Send me a message or shoot me an email at