FAILED: DON8 App
Hello there, I’m starting a series called “FAILED”. I will add my fail projects to this series and describe what we did, why we failed etc.
Project Info
The first project is DON8. App’s name is DON8 which means “donate”. It is a non-profit platform based on food and drinks purchases. Basically, It provides donating to people in need automatically from foods and drinks purchased.
So how people donate? Actually, there are discounted products in-app. Restaurants add their discounted products and DON8 shows their location and restaurant information on the home page. So the app promotes its discounted products. But half or specified percentage of discount is not valid for users to use that on charities.
So people eat with less money, restaurants are promoted.
Why Failed?
Let’s talk about why we failed. Isn’t that a great project?
Dead Teamwork
We were 4. But just 2 of us worked. I worked on the prototype development of the application and built the application. Another one is worked on presentations, texts, and other stuff. I also helped with them.
But the other 2 of us were passive. So are they faulty? No, I was faulty. As a project manager and developer of the project, I should have chosen team members correctly, distribute tasks to members right.
Presentation was BOOOOOOORIIING
We made the intro pitch in like 2 hours. So we hadn’t so much time. But definitely, it was enough for a hackathon.
We presented “What is DON8?”, “How does it work?”, and pages titles. There was a lot of text. My talk was slow. 0 images.
I used acceleration for presenting a functional application at the last min. I realized we’re not accelerating. We’re compressing all that unnecessary information to the last minute. And that compressed memories are bombing people’s minds. I should have deleted that unnecessary stuff to decrease duration but not compressing all stuff.
Manipulating Votes
We manipulated votes. How we did that? Were we cheaters? Well, we sent the devpost link to our friends to request likes right after we finished the project. But likes aren’t important. The important thing is the votes. So other projects saw we have so many likes.
So they did the same thing. But they did that 5 hours before the winners announced. They got 56 votes and 53 likes :D IN 5 HOURS!!!!
And last and painful fact: Idea was terrible
Nobody wouldn’t download the app for a 1$ discount and restaurants wouldn’t want to give a discount for promoting their place.
Also, if we really started the project and try to turn it into a real project, we should have had money to advertise the application. Because no user means no restaurants, also no restaurants mean no user.
Project Link: https://devpost.com/software/don8-donation-made-great
Thank you for your read. Please leave a comment on what you think. Did I have recognized an incorrect thing? Or did I miss a mistake?
