The Village
It takes a village to raise a child.
You're likely familiar with this old proverb. And while many members of our modern society may have children, there are very, very few among us who have a village at our disposal. This is where The Village app seeks to assist users.
Description
Using The Village app, users can create a private "village" or join a pre-existing village in their location by using their zip code. Users are granted "crayons" (the app's local form of currency) when they create a profile. These crayons can be used to trade for favors related to childcare with fellow villagers.
>>Link to live application - deployed in Heroku ➡️
For a detailed explanation of how to use the app, see the Usage section below.
Table of Contents
- Installation
- Usage
- Technologies Used
- Near Future Improvements
- Future Version Improvements
- Credits
- Art
- Contributing
- License
Installation
No installation is necessary to use The Village App right now.
This application was designed with an emphasis on mobile-first, so ideally future versions will be downloadable. It is currently unavailable as a PWA and is not available through Google Play or the App Store.
Usage
Upon opening the app, users are greeted by a landing page that allows them to sign up, log in, or navigate to our "Team Member" and "What Is the Village" pages.
What is the Village
If a user navigates to this page, they will get a brief introduction to what The Village does and how they can access it. A short list of FAQs is accessible through a drop-down menu.
Team Members
When a user navigates to this page, they are greeted with a list of our contributing team members and a brief biography for each.
Log-In
The application offers returning users (or villagers) the opportunity to login.
Sign-Up
New users are able to create a profile and enter the app.
Profile Page
Logged in villagers can see their profile page, listing their current crayon count. Villagers can also view their:
- username
- first and last name
- zipcode
Any of these selected profile details can be edited by the villager as needed. Villagers can also delete their account at any time.
Village Home Page
Villagers can access the village home page of the village they've joined. This page will list all active requests from other villagers. By clicking on the "Ask the Village!" button they are able to create a new request.
Villager's Request
Villagers can select a title, description, and number of crayons when making a new request to the village.
...and more!
Even more functionality is coming in future versions.
Technologies Used
Back End
Front End
- Our Slideshow presentation of The Village.
- We utilized this Figma Mockup to understand the user experience and to mock-up our application's graphics.
- This initial WireFrame was our first glance at what the UI and UX for the site might encompass.
Near-Future Improvements
In the short time we had for this initial build, we were unable to include some of the basic functionality in the app that we had initially planned for our MVC release version. The top priority improvements for us will allow:
- users to update their own password
- users to search for villages
- village administrators to delete their created village
- users to join an existing village
- users from a village to comment on a request in the village
- users to create a request
- users to claim a request posted by a fellow villager
- users to confirm completion of a request, thereby exchanging Crayons
- users to delete a request (which will delete the corresponding comments)
Future Version Improvements
For future version releases, we have further goals and possibilities for the app. These include:
- Providing a more detailed profile page which lists closed requests, open requests, and claimed requests belonging to the user
- Allowing users to search for villages geographically (or with other means than simply matching a zip code)
- Incorporating Stripe to allow donations in support of the developers
- Allowing village administrators to invite new villagers to join their village via external means (possibly through a passcode or email link)
- Permitting users to join more than one village
- Allowing users to select a profile image (or perhaps upload their own)
- A built-in chat/messaging service to allow villagers to communicate directly with one another
- A Crayon feed where users can see a history of their prior transactions
Credits
The development team for The Village app includes:
Art
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We created a mockup version of our app using Figma for prototyping navigation and UI.
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Some images were also sourced from Excalidraw.
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Our developer profile avatars were created using Avatar Maker.
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Additional clipart and images were sourced from Freepick.
Contributing
Pull requests are welcome. Please open an issue first to discuss any proposed changes or additions.
License
https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT
This project is open source and available under the MIT License.