Approach 1 -JakeB

One sentence Abstract:

All Hands makes people happier by encouraging them to help each other.

Background:

When I was a kid, my neighborhood was a place where everyone was always outside in the summer, people would stop by whenever they felt like it and we all helped each other freely. All-Hands seeks to bring that back. It uses many-many interaction and crowdsourcing to encourage people to interact personally with the people nearby. People can post and respond to personalized requests and get any sort of help they might need. Instead of focusing on buying and selling services or goods (on sites like Craigslist) All Hands is designed to encourage people to interact with and help other people before thinking about themselves.

All-hands is intended to be used in suburban neighborhoods and other places where there would have been a strong sense of community before smartphones and laptops allowed us to hide from each other. It requires access to a smart device and an internet connection.

Explanation:

It has a very simple interface, in order to encourage people to communicate in person. It starts off by having the user evaluate themselves on certain skills they have. This determines which help requests they’ll see first. On the main screen, the first thing people will see is a map of their immediate area. On this map, they’ll be able to see all the requests in their immediate area. It would use on-device caches to keep the load off of the main server. Each help request (a short description with contact info and location coordinates) would be stored on the posters device. A background service will then broadcast and receive nearby help requests every 30 minutes or upon opening the app.

Credits:

I designed everything on my own. Ryan Libby, Sophia C-C, Andrew Wilson and Tanner Matteson all gave me advice and critique. They reminded me that contact info would be necessary and gave me advice on the design layout. I sought to make a better version of things like craigslist that was more focused on providing help than receiving or buying things.

Budget:

$50 per month for basic app hosting on a server.

In order to stay in line with All hand’s purpose, it would be coded and maintained by a team of volunteers. I’m not going to be an app developer for a living and would be able to do this in my spare time.

It would be free to download, though people would be allowed to donate money if they wanted to help with hosting. Any excess donations would go to charity.