The story of the Wowee app is a perfect example of how the joy of giving can be transformed to the joy of helping those in need. Wowee is a web app through which money can be collected to buy gifts for family and friends. The app, which was developed together with students at FIT, also helps during the coronavirus pandemic.
It can be expected that due to coronavirus restrictions a lot of people will have a lower income than usual. The app, which was first created for crowdfunding to collect money for gifts for family members and friends, can now also help those in need.
“The Wowee app can easily be used also for charity projects and to help people whom life has treated unkindly,” says Bc. Michal Maněna, founder of Wowee, adding: “Wowee is a modern way to help remotely to individual families that have lost part of their income due to the current situation, or to the elderly who have no family.”
How does it work? Register for free in the web app, create a wish or a fundraising project for a particular person and share it with others so that they can also participate. All the money collected in a project belongs to the recipient, even if the fundraising target is not met.
“In the future, a symbolic payment will be introduced in the case of fundraising for non-charitable purposes, such as gifts,” says Mr Maněna.
The Wowee app was created in 2017 in collaboration with FIT CTU, which provided the technology for the development of the app. The involvement of students of FIT who participated in the project as part of their theses was key in the development of the app.
“For students, the collaboration with the faculty was interesting particularly because in this way they were able to work on a project that had the potential to be used in practice and which was actually implemented,” says Ing. Jiří Chludil, teacher at FIT CTU, who led the project on behalf of FIT. “In the development of the project, we made full use of the facilities of FIT’s UX Testing Laboratory,” he adds.
