Since I decided to make things with altruistic abandon for April—anything COVID-19-related—I’d been observing needs and trends, and brainstorming ideas to plug those gaps. Some ideas so far:

Listings sites galore

I made a listing site for businesses, but with a civic blooming of mutual aid efforts, government initiatives and NGO programmes, perhaps there should be more listings now - for workers, industries, families, etc. All these listings need a listing, an umbrella mega-listing site to help people navigate to what they need.

Concierge bot

Form/chat bot with logic flow to help businesses see what government schemes they are eligible for. The Singapore Government had recently announced the Resilience Budget, an add-on budget of $48billion, and the whole of government has responded to deal with a plethora of schemes, grants, rebates, funding. Not just for businesses but industries and workers too. So many that it’s getting hard to navigate. Perhaps a logic flow in the format of an online form or messaging thread, that asks them a couple of questions to help them zoom in on the different funding they might have missed. Version 2.0 of this concierge form/bot could even be an extension of the mega-listing site from the first idea.

Tools for nudging civic behaviour

I’m not so sure what the solutions might look like, but here in Singapore, I think the government is trying really hard to get citizens to practice safe distancing and staying home. It’s part complacency, part not understanding just how bad it is, part driven out of daily practicality. They released advisories, text messages, infographics to drive in the point. They put in a temporary bill to make it illegal for business owners to ignore safe distancing in their premises. But everyone need to be responsible and play their part, and short of enacting yet another law to enforce safe distancing behaviour, it’s a hard uphill task of cultural/habit change on a massive scale. I’m thinking, what can we make to help people practice distancing better. Smartphone tech that beeps when others get too close? Comics and posters to drive home the point? A volunteer corps that walks around and tries to remind/convince people to stay apart?

Last mile food delivery for local restaurants

With everyone staying home more, there’ll be a greater demand for food delivery. But not every F&B outlet are on the current incumbents food delivery apps like Grab and Foodpanda. Many are small-time, sole proprietors running micro stalls in our food courts or hawker centres, and aren’t necessarily tech savvy. There has to be a better way to help them get their food offerings online, get orders, receive payment, and book delivery, all without bursting their already low margins. In fact, some of these restaurants might have idle service staff right now, whose job can now be redesigned to delivery instead. From on-site service delivery to off-site delivery of service. That way, restaurants get to keep their staff, nobody loses their jobs, the kitchen keeps running, and customers remain happy. Truth is, I’m also getting bored of ordering from the same old restaurants on the usual food delivery apps, and would welcome some variety from the local neighbourhood food stall I frequented before this whole shebang. This can eventually include home bakers and home cooks too, now that everyone is staying home and so might as well make a living there! For more advanced features, perhaps there should be a matching algorithm that can automagically match hawkers with riders based on certain criteria. 

Listing site of all the grocery deliveries

Grocery delivery had suddenly went mainstream during the lockdown. People need to get food, but are now worried to head out and mingle with the supermarket crowd. There was a huge list of all the various supermarkets chains, stand-alone grocers, gourmet stores circling around on Whatsapp. The virality of that one message goes to show how the demand for this resource is high. And it’s great to know there’s many other companies that deliver fresh food and daily supplies besides the the usual supermarket chains, because these incumbent players are overwhelmed with delivery orders, and it’s almost impossible to find a delivery slot now on their platform. So diversity of sources that the list will show, will help ease the demand somewhat. At the most basic level, the listing site should point you to outbound links where you can order what you need. Perhaps the next level of features could be a scraper and filter that can tell you if there are any delivery slots available on the date, time and location that you want, before you even click on it. And if there isn’t any, you can be matched up with freelance delivery folks or even hire a Grab driver to deliver for you. This would be something I would want to use myself, especially since it’s been particularly frustrating to get the stock I need (many goods are out of stock), and any delivery slot for that matter.

Weekly/Monthly meal subscriptions platform

Food delivery here in Singapore are mostly for one-off, single purchases. It’s for that occasional meal when you are too lazy to cook, or you prefer to stay home to chill. Eating out is pretty cheap and accessible for most Singaporeans, so meal subscriptions delivered to you daily seldom make sense. In local lingo, we call it tingkat, named after the traditional metal containers that houses the food. To save on the hassle of ordering everyday while staying home due to the lockdown, I thought I could order meal subscriptions for the family. It’s also cheaper than a stand-alone delivery on Grab every time. Best of all, the food is home-style cooking – usually the standard of three dishes, one soup and white rice. Very Chinese style. But to my horror, the whole tingkat industry is stuck in Web 1.0 days. The UI and UX of their websites are awful, confusing, and only digital for half the way. You fill out an order form and someone still has to call within the next 2 days to confirm the order. The daily/weekly menu is often not shown, and people are expected to purchase a meal subscription on blind faith! And worse, they said they offer lunch and dinner, but it’s the same menu for both! So I ended up having to order lunch from one caterer and dinner from another. It was such a painful experience trying to navigate through so many different caterers, figuring out which tastes better, offers better value-for-money, etc. Information is very fragmented and difficult for a tingkat newbie to analyse and figure out easily. The best resources are the occasional blog post review, which gets dated fast. In a time with apps like GrabFood where it’s so easy and convenient to order food from an app, this was really surprising. GrabFood isn’t even from a different industry! It’s still F&B! How did these caterers not get the memo on tech upgrades? If anything, I really wish to just check out the weekly menu, order my meal sub from an app, a few taps and clicks, pay via secured credit card, and done. I can imagine this being attractive for many who are looking for easier ways to manage the household when staying safe at home. 

Translations of important information for vulnerable groups - elderly, foreigners, and persons with disabilities

Seeing this translation site created by volunteers to help medical professionals ask basic questions in Tamil and Bengali, made me wonder how the vulnerable groups in Singapore are getting their news. The rules and fines for safe distancing are changing on a daily basis, and it’s hard to keep up even for tech savvy folks. I can’t imagine how it’s like for say an elderly person in the low income group who doesn’t have TV, smartphone or even radio, and gets her news feed by the occasional local papers and word of mouth. And that’s assuming she understands and reads English or one of the other other 3 official ethnic languages in Singapore. Many elderly only speak Chinese dialects, making information access worse. The translation site also shows how migrant workers in Singapore—Indian and Bengali nationals who build our houses and clean our estates—are left out of the loop when it comes to the news. Lastly, persons with disabilities who can’t see or hear, how are they getting their sources? Perhaps we need a media website similar to Youtube or Soundcloud (or even just use these platforms themselves), where you can search and play the important news of the day in other dialects and languages. Native speakers of the language can volunteer to translate it into audio and text, and post it up on the site. These can be printed in leaflets to be handed out to those without internet access. That way, everyone gets access to the critical information we need to survive and to safe-distance properly.  

Shopper service ala Instacart / Task Rabbit

It’s seriously difficult to get a delivery slot now for any supermarket. The fastest way is still heading straight down to the store and getting it yourself. Besides, one cannot always get everything from a supermarket. Other necessities can only be bought from other online stores, and with that, the delivery fees add up. What if there’s shopper service like Instacart or Task Rabbit where professional shopper can do the grocery run on your behalf. This will be great for people who might be immuno-compromised,  have weaker immunity or are unable to get to the stores due to work. This already happens as a volunteering/social welfare service for vulnerable or low income groups. Such a service could also be useful for those on home quarantine or stay home notices. If not a private concierge-style shopper service, this could be a neighbourhood arrangement, where you collaborate with your immediate neighbours, everyone takes turns going to the supermarket and they drop the supplies off on your door while on their way home just a few steps away. There’s already neighbourhood group buys happening organically within physical communities, so this is just a small step up from that.

To be continued…