CampusDash

**CampusDash** makes campus food more accessible, convenient, and affordable—whether you're too busy to grab a meal or looking for a quick side hustle! 🚀

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🚀 CampusDash

CampusDash is our MVP submission for Hack Knight Spring 2025, designed to make food delivery on Queens College campus more convenient and affordable. This platform empowers students and faculty to order food from on-campus spots and have it delivered by fellow students looking to earn extra cash.

Inspiration

Our inspiration for this project came from the frustration students face when trying to order campus food through apps like UberEats and DoorDash, only to find that many on-campus dining options aren’t available. We wanted to create a solution that allows students to have meals delivered straight to their classroom or study spot, making campus life more convenient. At the same time, we saw an opportunity to help students earn extra cash by delivering these orders in their free time. This peer-to-peer system not only improves access to campus food but also fosters a supportive student community. Our goal was to make food delivery on campus more accessible, affordable, and beneficial for everyone involved.

📌 How It Works

🛒 For Customers (Ordering Food)

  1. Sign in with Google authentication.
  2. Choose a food spot from a campus map (powered by Openstreetmap and Leaflet.js) or a list of available vendors.
  3. Enter your order details, delivery location (building & room), and set a minimum tip for the delivery.
  4. A ticket is created, which expires if not claimed within a set time.
  5. Track your order and receive real-time status updates when a delivery is accepted.

🚴 For Dashers (Making Deliveries)

  1. Sign in and choose the "Make a Delivery" option.
  2. Receive new ticket notifications and claim an order on a first-come, first-served basis.
  3. Get customer details (name, contact, location) and order information.
  4. Complete the delivery and receive a direct tip from the customer.
  5. Only one active delivery is allowed per dasher at a time.

🛠 Tech Stack

  • Frontend: HTML, CSS, JavaScript
  • Mapping: OpenStreetMap API Leaflet.js for interactive campus map
  • Authentication & Database: Google Firebase
  • Backend: Firebase Firestore for storing users, orders, and delivery statuses

Challenges We Faced

One of our biggest challenges was integrating Firebase, from setting up authentication and Firestore to ensuring real-time updates worked smoothly. Without React.js or Node.js, we had to rely on vanilla JavaScript, making state management and dynamic UI updates more complex. Handling real-time database updates required manually syncing the frontend with Firestore changes, which was more difficult without React’s reactivity. Additionally, designing a modern and responsive UI was challenging without frontend frameworks, requiring extra effort to manipulate the DOM efficiently. Despite these hurdles, we gained valuable experience in optimizing Firebase’s event-driven model and building a functional, real-time application from scratch.

What We Learned

From this hackathon, we learned the importance of using frameworks like React.js and Node.js to improve our UI design and simplify database integration and authentication. Working with vanilla JavaScript made us realize how much these tools could streamline development and enhance user experience. We also gained valuable insights into time management, allowing us to work more efficiently under tight deadlines. Compared to our first hackathon, this experience felt much smoother, and we were better prepared to tackle challenges. Overall, this project taught us key technical and organizational skills that will make our future hackathons even more successful.

🚀 Future Development

After the hackathon, we will continue building CampusDash with:
✅ Next.js for enhanced performance and scalability
✅ Tailwind CSS for a modern UI
✅ Stripe integration for seamless online payments
✅ Live delivery tracking
✅ Qmail authentication to ensure only Queens College students & faculty can access the service

🏆 Built for Hack Knight Spring 2025

CampusDash was built in 48 hours as part of Hack Knight Spring 2025. A huge thanks to the organizers (Code for All QC), mentors, and fellow hackers for an incredible experience!

👨‍💻 Contributors

  • [Dilver Singh]
  • [Alfred Siby Cyriac]
  • [Jaskaran Bhogal]
  • [Sharif Ali]

📩 Feedback & Contributions

Since this is an MVP, we're excited to hear feedback and ideas for improvement! Open an issue or submit a pull request to contribute.

🔥 Stay tuned for major updates post-hackathon! 🚀

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