Development of applications for mobile devices I

Abstract

The number of donations in Singapore have been dropping, and non-profit organizations are finding it hard to meet their donation targets and struggling to provide the necessary support for their beneficiaries. Yet many Singaporean households have excess items that are just being thrown out or chucked aside. With the rising usage of smartphones in Singapore and advancement in technology, this project aims to use mobile applications to help encourage Singaporeans to donate their items to non-profit organizations. Surveys were conducted to better understand the reasons for not donating. Several non-profit organizations were contacted to understand their needs and to pitch the idea for a mobile application. This project will be working directly with a non-profit organization, Society of St Vincent de Paul (SSVP), which has said that this mobile application would really help them. This project is made of 4 parts, there will be two IOS mobile applications, a server (Heroku) and a cloud database (mongoDB). One application is for donors. It will allow users to create their personal account, view information about SSVP and how their donations will be helping. When users would like to donate they will first find out if it is suitable for the organization by entering descriptions and photos of items that they would like to donate. Users can indicate if they would like these items to be picked up or they will drop it off themselves. In their account they can also view the items that they have already donated or are pending for donation. A separate application will be made for the organization. SSVP will use it to view submitted donation details to determine if it is suitable for their beneficiaries. SSVP can then notify users if they will be accepting these items and if they will be picking it up. This prevents users from making a wasted trip down to donate and prevents organizations time from having to physically look through these items. After conducting surveys, this mobile application has been well received by both users and SSVP.