Investar
Investar
The realm of stocks and investments can seem like a scary place for young children. Investar breaks those barriers by helping children become star investors on its educational and fun web platform! Our team at SheHacks created Investar, which breaks barriers by introducing kids to the world of finance and helps them become star investors. Our web application uses a friendly user-experience, full of playful colors and imagery to attract younger girls between the ages of 10-15, which allows them to have fun on the platform and learn about the financial realm simultaneously. Children can practice buying shares from companies such as Scotiabank and Tesla with our fake currency system. They can buy or sell shares, and see their money grow!
SheHacks 2021: 2-Day Turnaround Time
Role
UX Design
Branding
Front-end coding
Tools
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
React.js, express.js, node.js
React-Bootstrap
The realm of stocks and investments can seem like a scary place for young children. Investar breaks those barriers by helping children become star investors on its educational and fun web platform!
Inspiration
The world of stocks and investments is an intimidating place for many people. Terms like dividends, bullish graphs, and shares are all unknown terminology for the majority. It is even seen as a male-dominated industry, and women in finance are a scarce sight. There is a lack of financial education in our grade schools, which heavily affects the new generation of hardworking kids. Even with some insight on the realm of investing, the intimidating UX in today’s investment platforms repels rather than attract. Investar is inclusive and accessible with its simple hierarchy, design, and copy.
How We Built It
After mocking up the design and branding on Adobe XD and Illustrator, we created a web application using React.js. Our team used Yahoo’s Finance API to gather the sponsor company’s stock share prices. To give the users a more stock market-like experience, we created a fake currency system in which users get $1,000 when they create the account. They then have the option to buy or sell shares across some amazing companies. In the database, we keep track of the user’s current balance and the stocks they are investing in. When they buy or sell a share, the money in their wallet is updated accordingly.
Challenges We Ran Into
Though an incredibly exhilarating weekend creating amazing projects, there were some challenges we ran into. Our remote team was in different timezones, which caused some complications, but we sacrificed some sleep in order to learn and build what Investar is now! As we all worked with new frameworks and programs, we ran into personal challenges with Bootstrap bugs, Postgres installation, and React component rendering, but powered through and solved our issues.
Accomplishments We Are Proud Of
Our team is incredibly proud to have published a finished full-stack web application with SheHacks! Our team members all worked with new frameworks, APIs, and fought through pesky bugs all weekend. We all learned new skills, collaborated at light night hours, and created an app that contributes to society for the better. We are proud of how our app pushes for the need to close the gender gap in the finance world, encourages younger girls to expand their financial literacy, and help them gain confidence in investing.
sTYLE GUIDE
