Have you ever felt frustrated or overwhelmed when buying a car at a dealership? You're not alone! According to a survey conducted by Harris Poll, 87% of American adults dislike something about the traditional car buying process. In fact, 56% of people would rather clean their home than go through the hassle of buying a car at a dealership. That's where AutoQuest comes in. Our website uses a highly personalized quiz and AI technology to make finding your perfect car easy and stress-free. And it's not just for first-time buyers! Even seasoned car shoppers can benefit from our customized approach, which takes into account all of your needs and preferences. Say goodbye to feeling tricked into buying unnecessary features, and hello to the car of your dreams with AutoQuest.
Each of our three team members has varying levels of experience with cars. Here's how that inspired us in different ways!
Kelly: I'm not really a car person at all - I don't know what the different models do or look like. I probably wouldn't even be able to remember the year of the car, let alone the model or all the specifications. Seeing as I recently got my driver's license and have been in the market for a car, I'm totally overwhelmed by all the options! I'd definitely use AutoQuest to help me select a perfect option!
Calder: I don't know a lot about cars! For me personally, this would make the car buying process challenging and scary. Because of this, I'm excited about the impact an app like this could have on people like me!
Yasseen: Automotives have been a hobby of mine for a very long time, and when I was looking at the hackathon leads, I was happy to see this hobby intertwine with Computer Science.
AutoQuest is a website wholly based on user input. The home page and hero section gives an enticing introduction to what AutoQuest is, attracting users to go further by one simple click of the Call to Action Button. Then, we gather the user's inputs to various different questions using a dynamic form. The user's selections are then deposited into our algorithm on the back-end. Then, we use Co:here's Generate Text API to generate them a completely customized, perfect sales pitch based on their personal needs, facts, stories, or literally whatever they would like to share with us! If they don't have any ideas, no worries! We also used the Generate API to in that case, tell them what kind of personality they have, why this would match with the chosen car, and highlight some great facts! Overall, we strove to make this not just a website, but a personalized journey from beginning to end.
Kelly used Figma to make all the visuals and design for the project. Yasseen and Calder used this to collaborate on the front-end, which utilizes HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Then, Calder wrote the back-end with his own custom algorithm in Python using FastAPI, and implemented the Co:here API throughout! We have to especially thank Ford for providing us such a wonderful selection of cars to recommend to our users!
Kelly: This time around was pretty smooth, to be honest! I definitely have gotten pretty proficient in using Figma since my first hackathon. An unexpected hurdle was definitely the Daylight Savings Time changing - I blinked and then it was 3am! Losing the hour was definitely a panic moment for sure, but thank you for the gracious extension!
Calder: Getting form data in a variety of data types from the front end was challenging, I had to patiently research how lists, strings, numbers, and boolean data types were represented in html forms vs python and perform the correct transitions to optimally retrieve all the users data for processing.
Yasseen: Unfortunately, we had some miscommunication with one of our group members which lead them unable to come. I'm proud that out group was capable of going past that hurdle to develop a full app.
Kelly: I decided to challenge myself this time around and go back to a high-quality image focused design, rather than the vector art designs I've been favouring lately. I made this decision because when you're selling a physical product, it's important to have stunning images that really blow the buyer away! I had to re-learn a lot of my old techniques, but I'm so proud of how my design skills have improved and the ease of which I can do things now!
Calder: I really like the way my API came together, I feel it was cleanly written and effective at all the tasks required by the application. I also was very excited to integrate cohere's AI into our application as it enriched the user experience greatly!
Kelly: I learned how to use a subdued, clean colour palette to evoke a sense of trustworthiness in a product! Usually I default to bright, attention grabbing colours, but sometimes a muted, stable palette is the way to go. Especially for a product designed to help likely buyers breathe, relax...and get led to their perfect car.
Calder: I learned and implemented many new to me techniques in FastAPI, jinja, and python in general to accomplish the objectives of our app, for example taking in a complex data bundle from the form on the frontend and processing it with a custom algorithm to optimally recommend a vehicle based on user requirements.
Yasseen: I've learned so much more about coding in these past 24 hours than I have in a month. The process of coding an entire app from start to finish is a long and tedious process, but nonetheless a fun challenge.
In the future, we'd really love for this to be integrated into Ford's website! When doing project research, we noticed that Ford and numerous other car competitors have a search by/sort by function to help narrow down the potential cars, but how about if you don't even know what the features do? How about if you don't know what you should want? With something like AutoQuest in the website, inexperienced buyers will be grateful, and this could generate more sales without the need to pay salesmen. It's scalable, affordable, and it's a great solution to help more people get matched with their perfect car! Ford would definitely stand out from it's competitors (trust us, we did the research) and help people find the perfect car for them! It's a win-win for everyone :)