SWIFT

It's a tale as old as time. I want to take you back to your college and high school days. It's the morning after the big game. The night was unforgettable, but you wake up wishing it never happened. You check your phone and realize you left something at the party last night. You give up on getting that purse because you can’t even muster up the strength to get out of bed. What if there was a delivery service not just for close range food, but also picking up and delivering personal items between individuals?

Problem

Limited delivery options. Current courier systems solely focus on the delivery of food & beverages.
Slow. Leaving your personal items at a friend’s place or office is time-consuming and inconvenient to pick up from. Current couriers often take over 60+ minutes to deliver a single meal.
Expensive. On top of that, prices are insensible for close-proximity food, making it inconvenient for consumers to get the items they need on time.

Solution & testing

Swift is a close-proximity delivery service that delivers personal items as well as close-range retail.

To validate that the problem exists, we conducted actual deliveries within USC campus through creating an online form that users can fill in whenever they need a delivery. This information then gets synced with our backend spreadsheet where we coordinate who can fastest pickup and deliver the package.

The pie chart is the 15 deliveries divided into different categories. Over 50% of all deliveries were in the food and beverage category, which revealed a shortage/the need for fast and close-proximity food delivery services on USC campus. This is followed by personal items and documents that were the second and third largest portion of where our demand comes from. We realized that people would use our service to deliver items that are productivity related, such as skateboards, computer chargers, or paperwork.

In 1 week: Swift received 15 delivery requests, totaling $105 in profit. The average time of delivery was 10.4 minutes and a 0.96-mile courier delivery radius.

Product

Our product is a mobile app allows users to submit a delivery request by filling in the item information, current address, and designated delivery address. After confirming and creating the order, they then coordinate with their friend that has the item to ensure that they are notified and able to hand the item to the courier on time.

From the end user side, they will be updated with the status and real-time location of the courier.

In the meantime, the sender of the item will receive a code via text message, which they will enter into their portion of the app. They will then confirm their location and be able to track when the courier is arriving to pick up the item. To ensure that the package is safely delivered, we will require couriers to take photos of the item when they pick up and also when they deliver it to the final destination.