Trova.do

Inspiration

COVID-19 global panic buying has emptied shelves of basic staples in all supermarkets, leaving families, high risk groups and individuals without access to the most basic needs. Supply chains are implementing measures to increase their stock levels and safety protocols but fear of shortages of food and services are making their stock on site fluctuate every week and supermarkets become high-risk infection areas.

What it does

Trova.do is a platform that helps users optimise their visit to the supermarket, by informing them about item availability in their nearest shops, while reducing their exposure to the virus, eliminating unnecessary movements to risk areas.

How we built it

User research to 50 people from different parts of the world.

Stock levels:

• Toilet paper, pasta, rice, flour, yeast, bread, tins of preserved food, hand sanitiser and other cleaning products are the main items people have been having trouble finding in their local supermarket.
• Paracetamol, masks and gloves have been sold out in specialised shops.

Safety equipment:

• 46% of people don't have the necessary protective equipment they can use when they're out.
• Only 7% percent of people have a full protective equipment.
• 13% of people only have gloves.
• 17% of people only have masks.
• 17% of people have masks and gloves.

Exposure frequency:

• 16% of people did not visit the supermarket in the past week.
• 52% of people went to the supermarket once in the past week.
• 32% of people went to the supermarket more than twice in a week.

Risk groups:

• People with no protective equipment went to the the supermarket x1.87 times more than people with some protective equipment.
• People with no protective equipment went to the supermarket 1.11 times per week on average, while people with some protective equipment went 0.59 times per week on average.

Define & Develop

• Based on this data, we know the majority of people are trying to limit their visit to the supermarket. However, finding the items sold out in-store, they are forced to go several times in a week.
• We want to search for the data that will generate stock levels.
• We want integrate the map with supermarket near user's location.
• We want to filter the supermarkets based on items availability.
• Design and develop the UI.

Challenges we ran into

• Retrieving enough data from supermarkets websites and locating/filtering them in the map.
• Not sleeping much.
• Making sure the stock availability is true and updated frequently.
• Identifying users that have recently been in a supermarket and ask them about the availability of certain items.
• Reaching out to the elder community.
• Trying not to get overwhelmed by the COVID-19 emergency and all the needed features and build a MVP.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• Contributing to open source projects, like Gridsome.
• Helping any way we can to fight the COVID-19 outbreak with our resources and skills.

What we learned

• More people than we thought are exposed to high-risk hotspots.
• Even though supply chains keep increasing their stock levels, the most essential products are still sold out.
• TailwindUI is awesome when you need to build fast.
• Adding more than one language to the site.

What's next for Trova.do

• Add pharmacies to the list.
• Add more supermarkets to the list.
• Scale the website to a global level and add more languages.
• Let people become active trusted contributors, gamifying the process of updating stock levels and help the next supermarket visitors.
• Let people ask for specific item availability that we might not be currently tracking.
• Help supermarkets get a more even distribution of people in their time slots, avoiding peak hours.
• Help supermarkets analyse and predict users behaviours by neighbourhoods.
• Set up a digital queue or online shopping system.