Matchbox

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Inspiration

Our team was inspired by our university’s CS community. Being surrounded by talented developers and as developers ourselves, we wanted to have a resource that would allow developers to find projects they are passionate about.

What it does

Matchbox is a web cloud application that allows users to specify their background, experience, and interests. The application connects the user with open-source projects that align with their values and background through our filtering algorithm. Matchbox empowers developers with the ability to instantly discover projects that they are excited to contribute to.

How we built it

We started by designing our user interface in Figma. Our team utilized AWS Amplify’s cloud computing tools to construct our backend and create a relational database using DynamoDB. Additionally, we used GraphQL to query and mutate the database to interact and provide information with the front end. This allowed dynamic and responsive features, such as viewing other users’ posted projects or setting their own search preferences to help filter for similar projects.

Our team then rapidly developed the UI using Javascript with React and MUI web development libraries to flush out six dynamic and responsive pages, which also connected to our backend.

Challenges we ran into

At the start of the hackathon, our team members specialized specifically in the backend or in frontend devlopment and had little experience with the opposing frameworks. Because this project required collaboration to connect the frontend and backend implementation, when there were gaps in our individual knowledge, we supported each other to fill those knowledge gaps. If one person ran bugs, we helped each other this created trust within our team and led us to believe in each other's abilities.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a working, dynamic and responsive web application with little to no prior experience is something we are incredibly proud of.

We are proud of our ability to implement a functional cloud computing service within the limited time that we had.

Giving back to our university’s community by creating an app that will connect developers with a place to express their skills and passion for CS

Supporting each other in learning new frameworks and helping each other understand our thought processes allowed us to understand far more than we ever could alone.

What we learned

What we have learned is how to use react to develop a front end and use AWS more effectively than before to set up our back end. We learned how to manage time better under stressful deadlines and came out with a working project. A nuanced understanding of time management and how to work effectively in a team.

What's next for Matchbox

Our team is looking forward to expanding our web app’s features, scaling our application, and improving the user experience for our developers. We are excited to have the opportunity to deploy a working website to production!

Such as implementing a list of ‘not interested’ projects so the user can manually filter out projects they aren’t interested in despite it matching their language preferences or areas of experience.