Design and Development of a Smart Student Rental Platform for Sustainable Campus Communities

This study explores consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce systems, with a focus on platforms such as Carousell and Facebook Marketplace, and examines the financial challenges commonly faced by university students. Many students require essential academic or lifestyle items for short-term use but often rely on unofficial channels, such as social media groups, that are unregulated, inefficient, and prone to trust issues. To address this gap, the proposed solution introduces UniLend, a centralized rental-based mobile platform that enables students to lend and borrow items within their academic community. By promoting a “rent-instead-of-owning” model, the system enhances affordability, fosters trust, and encourages sustainability through shared item usage. The system was developed following an agile methodology. Flutter was used to implement the cross-platform mobile client, while Google Firebase supported backend services including authentication, database management, cloud storage, and notifications. Stripe was integrated for secure payment handling. The prototype consists of seven core modules: user authentication, item listing, catalog browsing, search functionality, rental history tracking, integrated payment, and user reviews. Evaluation included black-box testing to validate functional requirements, confirming that all modules operated as expected with both valid and invalid inputs. A usability study is also planned, involving a pilot test with students to gather feedback on navigation, trust in transactions, and clarity of workflows using the System Usability Scale (SUS) and interviews. The results demonstrate the feasibility of a structured, trust-driven rental ecosystem tailored for higher education communities. UniLend contributes to ongoing efforts to develop sustainable, affordable, and student-centered digital platforms.