Leeds Binder

Framing the Problem

Many small and medium-sized businesses in Leeds struggle to discover reliable local partners, suppliers, and service providers efficiently. The existing networking channels are fragmented, time-consuming, and often rely on unreliable referrals, leading to missed collaboration opportunities, wasted resources, and slow economic growth. This problem affects all local businesses seeking meaningful, trust-based partnerships that can help them grow and thrive. There is a critical need for an intuitive, data-driven platform that personalises partner discovery, fosters reliable connections, and accelerates collective success. Business owners have to search on their own for every service they need and find ways to connect that could mean keeping track of WhatsApp, SMS, Phone, emails and other messages.

Idea Explanation

One App to Bind them all. Leeds Binder is an AI-powered "Tinder for Business," where companies create profiles, enhance their descriptions with AI assistance, and then are matched with suitable local partners—be they providers or seekers—through swipe-based matching. The platform streamlines business networking, reduces friction in finding trustworthy collaborations, and fosters a vibrant local ecosystem by facilitating instant communication and scheduling, thereby directly addressing the connectivity gap. Empower Leeds businesses, suppliers, and service providers to forge strategic collaborations effortlessly by using an AI-powered matchmaking platform that intelligently connects local companies based on real needs, expertise, and trust – driving growth, community resilience, and economic vitality.

Implementation

We decided to go down the route of creating an interactive demo by leveraging AI tooling within a design framework.

Following this approach; stakeholders can gain a fast impression of what works and doesn't work for them, providing valuable fast feedback to help shape the future direction of the product.

Challenges

So many ideas, so much to develop. We had many ideas that we wanted to work on, we used double diamond approach to narrow down to the idea that we wanted to develop and the features we wanted to develop in the main idea.

We also divided the tasks that we wanted to do in the development and presentation.

We didn't have paid versions of the AI tools, so refining our work was not easy. We each created account and moved from tool to tool and one account to another to refine the work.

Accomplishments

Power of AI. Ability to create ideas in realtime using Claude AI, Perplexity, Figma AI and other tools. Working together and creating something valuable in such a short time.

Next Steps

• We want to ensure the app is accessible to at least WCAG 2.2 AA standards so that needs of all users even with diversity needs are met.

• We also want to integrate the app with platforms such as Meet-up, Eventbrite and Leeds Digital Festival, so that this one app can provide all the information from different sources.

• Add functionality for Reporting Businesses for providing false or incorrect information and not a legit business.

• Tailor matches more for seekers by allowing them to specify budget and timeframe requirements in their match criteria