CSCI 5708:

Project Proposal
NoToHunger
A Donation Gateway Application

Kush V Rao
Ks927365@dal.ca
CSCI 5708: Project Proposal
Abstract

A donation is a humanitarian aid for a good cause. The primary purpose of this Android app,
“NoToHunger” is to create a bridge between potential donors and recipients who are in great
need. NoToHunger is explicitly designed for leftover food [food] and money donation, which will
give the platform to the people to donate directly to the people who are in great need.
Especially in Canada food waste is increasing day by day referring form a report of CBC news
More than half of all food produced in Canada is lost or wasted so using this platform a change
can be inducted. Not a single individual should remain hungry and should have access to food as
it is the fundamental human right.

A donation can be of various types, including money, food, clothes, toys, and so forth. The app
will be implemented on android platform with database so that it can provide modular and
cohesive experience. The goal is to maximize the interaction between the Donor and the
receiver and mobilize communities to advocate them to make changes into society that can help
the needy people. This application is unique because no other app has solely focused on food
waste and trying to bridge the gap between potential Donor and receiver or needful people.

Introduction

The three basic survival needs for a human being are food, clothing, and shelter. Among these,
food is an essential need as it fuels our bodies. It provides energy for all the activities done by
human beings. The world produces 17% more food per person today than 30 years ago [1].
However, it is estimated that close to a billion people go to sleep hungry. The lack of access to
food not only leads to hunger poverty but also malnutrition, vitamin deficiency, and social
problems. The perennial concern is not the amount of food produced but the amount of food
wasted.

As per the Foods and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, roughly one-third of the
food produced in the world get wasted (approximately 1.3 billion tons) [2]. In developing
countries, the behavior of consumers plays a significant part. It is universally agreed that raising
awareness as well as finding a beneficial use for food that is presently wasted will help in
decreasing the food waste. Presently though there are many food donors curious and willing to
donate food, connecting all of them with recipients is a cumbersome task. This unique proposed
Application will serve as a platform to connect the food donors and donor recipients, and it will
also help in raising awareness about hunger poverty, food production, wastages.

The primary purpose of “NoToHunger” is to serve the community by attracting and connecting
qualified donors and volunteers with donor recipients. A donation can be either food or money
based on the donor recipient’s requirement and the donor’s compatibility.
 The proposed android app will allow individuals and organizations not only to donate food but
also to donate money in easy steps. As transparency could increase donations and develop a
strong relationship between donors and donor recipients, NoToHunger will recommend
transparency in every step. The Application will have “easy-to-use” features inbuilt to support
the diverse age group of users. The website will also be user-friendly with features such as
mobile friendliness and optimized donation pages which guarantee positive user experience and
repetitive visits by the users.

Purpose and Benefits:

The purpose of this application is to be a create a bridge between qualified donors and volunteers
with donor recipients by combining and providing many features that need to narrow that gap of
connection between proposed users(some of which are available as a standalone application), and
incorporate them in one complete package. Also, giving a platform for the people to donate and
option to connected with people for a good cause and help in solving hunger issues by saying in
NoToHunger.

Donating is a good cause and make people happy, as looking at the numbers that are stated in the
introduction food waste in Canada has increased 58% off all food in Canada is lost or wasted
according to CBC we can save a third of that food and can utilize to feed people. This will provide
a good opportunity for a small revolution for food waste that is taking place at restaurants, food
banks, grocery stores and many more where good food is wasted on daily bases.

The existing apps in the mobile market have a narrow function. For Example, there are charity
apps , fund raising application which have feature that contributes for Helping feed the hundreds
of thousands of hungry people in the world like - https://sharethemeal.org/en/

Medium, Mode and Environment

Donor are either small organization (Restaurants, Foodbanks etc.) or large organization
(Restaurants, foodbanks etc.). We assume that this application will typically links the gaps of
potential donors and needed people or NGO’s that take care of helping hungry people.
NoToHunger will make it easier for anyone to donate anything they want in a simple way and the
least troubling way, because it shows the nearest possible people who need help

The Design Goal of this application available on any android platform and environment. To enable
better user experience using all best practices. The users of for the application will interact with
a distinct and very quick easy interface that quickly take them to the task which they wanted to
perform. The application will support both phones and tablets. The user will also be notified by in
app alerts, and out of app notifications to draw attention to changing condition information.
Target User Insights and Functionality

NoToHunger is equipped with four different types of user accounts – administrator, donors,
recipients, and volunteers. Donors are the users who visit the site to donate food or money.
Administrators have complete control over all types of user accounts of the application. The
administrator can accept/deny a new user based on the offline background check results. The
administrator can suspend, resume or delete a user based on the arising needs. Donors can be an
individual or an organization. Recipients are the users who are organizations that use this android
app to receive donations and to post advertisements about their food requirements.

However, the recipients can create requests only for food and not for money. Volunteers are the
users who visit the website to volunteer themselves in arranging the logistics of the food ensuring
timely and proper deliveries to the recipients.

The users will be asked to provide a valid email id, postal address, date of birth, etc., during the
time of registration. The approval of registration is done by the administrator based on the details
provided. This Application will provide the major functionalities that all the donation charity has.
This application will presently be designed for the users of Halifax, Canada.

Basic Functionality

For me the primary preference is to develop basic features that are listed bellow that are

1. Donation food
a. After login as a donor. Donor can clicks donate now to donate food. A form is
displayed. The form is filled by the donor and saved. Once it is saved, the food
offer can be reflected in the registered recipients.
2. Recipient features
a. Receiver can see a dashboard type UI that shows the list of food offerings
available. The user can choose the one needed.
3. Volunteer tracking
a. The third user is a volunteer that can see the list of orders waiting to be
delivered. The volunteer can either choose or donate or view the list of
donations done by the volunteer so far. The status of delivery can be seen by
clicking on Track button in the donor or receiver dashboard. It shows who too
the offer, whether it is delivered or not
4. Map integration
a. The map shows the locations of the potential donors in the nearby location for
receiver and vice a versa.
5. User profile
Bonus Functionality

These listed features are focused as a bonus

1. AI base Chat bot

a. This feature makes user experience more friendly as this both can
communicate with users in layman’s terms and help user to have a pleasant
usage time while accessing this application

2. Live tracking of items just like feature of UBER but this is for donated items.

High Level Organization

A prototype will be developed using the android studio as its IDE. Initially, the
development of user registration and login functionality will be designed so that the
basic App and data manipulation will be tested in the first layer of the application.
After that developing activity based on designed wireframe’s, all the views will be
developed first. As this application follows MVC architecture that distributes the
business logic and the design of the application.

Development of UI is performed by Wearing user’s shoes so that the application can

give enticing experience to every user. The UI and UX of the Application will be
consistence. The information architecture of the application. We can use API for
Google maps and AI base Chat bot that is supported by Dialog flow. Developing
features of Donors and Recipients that access information from database again and
again we can develop and API service that easily interact with Database and fetch
information in fast and more convenient way so that there is less computational load
on Android app.

Using GEO API, we can calculate distance between the delivery points and show that
information to volunteer that can help them to take the orders on base of time and
chose that task as appropriate measures. Using material-based UI can make
application more user friendly and makes looks of the App more modern hence
increase the usage of the app.
Milestones and Timeline:

Week 1
Work on Level 1 developing wireframes and making login and registration for every user and
establishing Database connection.

Week 2
Starting development of Donor dashboard and its related features and making Receivers
dashboard.

Milestone 1
Showing a release of the above-defined application feature and testing for errors and test cases.

Week 3
Making the remaining functionalities of other users implementing API’s and plan for testing with
users. Testing the whole information architecture and start preparing for final release.

Week 4
Final testing and checking the list of basic features and if all are working correctly, then start
with the bonus features.

Milestone 2
A prototype final testing and demonstration of Application.

Week 5
Submitting to the Google App Store
REFERENCES

[1] Dosomething.org, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://www.dosomething.org/us/facts/11-

factsabout-world-hunger.

[2] "Key facts on food loss and waste you should know!", Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations, 2019. [Online]. Available: http://www.fao.org/save-
food/resources/keyfindings/en/.