Create a Community (CaC)

Inspiration

The inspiration behind Create a Community started with our experiences in dorms and student housing the past two years at the University of Washington. Though we always passed by and met other students living in our dorm hall or apartment building, there was not a centralized platform to connect with and engage with our neighbors. By allowing residents to join their dorm or apartment, CaC automatically creates a community space for students to support each other and build lasting friendships.

What it does

Create a Community provides a space for students in the same living space to connect with and share experiences with each other through an interactive web application centered around posts or requests that residents can make. Residents can make requests like borrowing items or post an announcement/invitation for social events, which will show up for everyone in the community on the main dashboard page. Users can then respond to requests/posts, indicating whether they are able to provide help

How we built it

Create a Community was built using React (Typescript) and Firebase to handle data management.

Challenges we ran into

Especially at the start, we ran into some problems with setting up git that stalled our process, and because we were not familiar with some technologies, we spent some time learning how to use them. Using our prior experience with similar technologies, however, we were able to quickly learn and adapt to these technologies.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of integrating Firebase into our web app, especially as most of us were not experienced with the technology. Learning to manage the user data within a short period of time was rewarding and a huge learning experience for our team. Being able to develop our idea and create a detailed wireframe during the brainstorming process helped a lot in streamlining our process.

What we learned

We learned how to use new technologies and languages like Firebase and Typescript and discussed a lot of design decisions around the best way to organize and store data. We developed best practices on working efficiently and collaboratively and how to divide roles up within a team.

What's next for Create a Community (CaC)

With more time, we hope to expand upon CaC's current features and better consider the scalability of the web app. There are a lot of additional features that we would want to implement into CaC: booking or check-in system for amenities like study rooms and rooftops, admin login to create a new community, and direct messaging between residents. We also think creating a mobile app would make CaC easier to use for users.