Circles

Circles is a dating platform that connects users through shared childhood memories, using AI to match based on similar experiences while providing unique conversation prompts for genuine connections.

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Inspiration

Our journey to create Circles began when a friend of a team member expressed having struggled to find genuine connections and long-term relationships after moving to the University of Washington for his freshman year. The Seattle Freeze made it particularly challenging, and existing dating apps like Tinder and Bumble mostly led to short-term hookups, which wasn't what he was looking for. Additionally, Jeff was concerned about the prevalence of catfishing and bots on these platforms. Through our research, we discovered that many others in the market, like our friend, were also seeking long-term relationships. Actually about 42% of men and 48% of women. While invite-only apps exist, they often lack a large enough user base to be effective. This realization inspired us to create Circles—a platform focused on fostering authentic connections rooted in shared experiences and memories.

What it does

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of DubHacks and its theme, "How Far We've Come, How Far We'll Go," we proudly introduce Circles, a dating platform that connects the past with the future. Circles is designed to spark genuine connections by rekindling shared childhood memories and experiences, whether it's the schools they attended or the movies they loved growing up. Our platform uses AI to suggest matches based on these unique connections, fostering conversations through tailored prompts that lead to more natural and less awkward interactions. By building relationships rooted in shared experiences, we pave the way for meaningful connections that can flourish over time.

Here's how it works: Users can create an account on our website and update their profiles with their interests, the schools they attended, and their favorite childhood memories and movies. To ensure a safe and authentic community, users undergo a verification process, which includes uploading a video of themselves speaking and interacting with an AI bot. This helps confirm their identity and ensures they are genuine users. Once verified, users are matched with others who share similar backgrounds. Each match is accompanied by a personalized prompt that encourages fun discussions, creating opportunities for networking or even blossoming into something more meaningful. Together, we can take the journey further into the future.

How we built it

We built Circle using express.js and plain html/js/css. We used APIs from Perplexity, Cloudflare, Auth0, and OpenAI.

Challenges we ran into

Initially we ran into challenges when working with Next.js, however we were able to pivot to using a different technology.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Although our team had varying levels of experience with the technologies we were using, we embraced the challenge and leveraged our diverse skill sets to strengthen our collective knowledge. Each member contributed unique perspectives and capabilities within the group. This collaborative environment encouraged us to share resources, tutorials, and best practices. We are proud of our ability to learn new technologies on the fly and communicate/develop ideas to make this project.

What we learned:

During the hackathon, we learned how to best develop and implement a project idea from start-to-finish. From creating a logo to developing silly-goofy ideas for verifications, our team was able to learn the benefits of certain languages and frameworks when making products. Throughout the project, we also developed essential project management skills, as we coordinated tasks, set deadlines, and maintained clear communication within our team. This not only improved our workflow but also helped us to build a robust application that met our goals.

What's next for Circles

Our Goal is to first collect users on the UW campus through recruiting campus ambassadors program to gain more users and test product market fit. Eventually we would like to scale this project to other college campuses and foster long term relationships in the dating app marketplace gaining market share and

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