Insight

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  Insight Logo

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  Insight landing Page

Inspiration

Being university students looking for internships and work experience, it it is quite difficult to get in contact with industry recruiters and employers. This difficulty has been especially highlighted by the pandemic which has limited any kind of social interactions. We wanted a user experience that was more personal than LinkedIn so that recruiters and potential employees would actually have a shot at landing the position. We wanted to give people the opportunity to connect with others from the comfort of their homes.

What it does

Insight is a location based networking app. It notifies users who have similar interests when they enter the same area, then users can then decide whether or not to engage with this person through the built in chat application.

How we built it

Insight is mainly built around the Radar.io platform. This platform provides extensive tools for location based apps, specifically using geofences and tracking users' movements. Insight works by having the main landing page send all inputted user information to the Firebase database. Python then uses this data and constantly searches all geofences to see if any likeminded users are in the same area. Once two or more likeminded users are in the same geofence, Python communicates with Radar.io to execute the Swift script that sends a push notification to the users.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into problems when creating push notifications on the phone when a user was nearby. We used both XCode and Android studio to try and tackle this problem, but XCode ended up being the more effective choice. We also struggled with notifying the user at the correct time. This part was done through a Python script and was solved using the Search API tool from Radar.io

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This was our first time using Radar.io, Swift, and Node.js. We are happy to have learned and used multiple new technologies such as geofencing. We are also proud to have a working product at the end of this hackathon. Given the timeframe we did not expect to have a complete project, but through good time management and a clear vision, we achieved our goal.

What we learned

Throughout this hackathon, we learned mostly about how Radar.io works. By looking through the documentation and creating our own scripts, we learned much about the technology that platforms like Radar.io use, specifically geofencing and user location tracking. Not only did we learn what these technologies are, but also how they work. Another thing we learned through this hackathon was how to use Swift and XCode. Creating a push notification to notify users of nearby Insighters proved to be quite the challenge. We solved this issue by watching Youtube tutorials and reading online documentation. This really gave us a peak into how Swift code is written, and provided us with a valuable learning experience in app development.

What's next for Insight

Insight is based around its user tracking which may raise privacy concerns for some people. This is why we plan to add a ghost mode feature in the future. Ghost mode will allows users to not be tracked and therefore not show up to other users on the map even if they are nearby. We understand that sometimes people want to be left alone and not network with others, so we believe ghost mode would be a valuable addition. In the long term, Insight's vision is to be the prime networking app for professionals around the world. We believe partnering with LinkedIn and similar services will be beneficial to both companies, and especially to our users. We also plan on using our growing client base to host events under Insight. Not only will this be a great opportunity for all kinds of professionals to meet up and network with one another, but it will be an excellent showcase of the power and capabilities of our app.

Built With

• css
• firebase
• html
• javascript
• node.js
• python
• radar.io
• swift