Around

Town

An app geared towards serving and empowering small, locally owned business by creating a resource that will allow consumers to easily find a businesses to support outreach and sales throughout the tough times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Summary:

Megan Luu - Developer, Data Scientist

Sarah Huang - User Researcher

Team:

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many small businesses have been struggling or shut down during due to lack of customers. As the pandemic progresses, and as more restrictions are being placed on these businesses (capacity limits), the harder it is for small businesses to survive. As a result, this could negatively impact families that depend on their business’s survival, or even impact the local economy.

With the struggle of financial needs and stabilization, we hoped our solution could help keep small businesses thriving and create an opportunity for small businesses to gain recognition in the community.

Overall Goal:

Create a platform that will encourage users to support small and locally owned business through incentives such as discounts, along with bios, reviews and location services to support those struggling through the pandemic.

Emily Blakeman - Project Manager, Designer

Kristine Dao - Designer, User Researcher

“ To support one’s community, is to support the people that helped shape everything around you. ”

- Me

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Search: Users will be able to look for small businesses through our search feature. To help pinpoint what type of small business a user wants to research, the search function will include categories such as food, clothing, online stores, etc. Additionally, users can search up their friends on the app to connect with.

Promotions: View a list of available promotions from small businesses in the area. This will let our users know which businesses in the area are offering deals and discounts and will incentivize them to visit these small businesses. Small businesses will have the power to decide whether or not they offer promotions, and what kind of promotions they are offering. For example, a business might choose to offer 15% on a product while another small business decides to offer punch card rewards.

Social: Users will be able to follow their friends and other users on our app. The reviews that the user’s friends post will be displayed on a news feed letting them know which businesses their friends have enjoyed visiting. This will hopefully incentivize users to support these businesses as well.