Nittany Study Dens

Inspiration

With a campus as big and beautiful as Penn State, more often than not we are not even aware of the existence of amazing facilities. This inspired us to help students to make use of the available facilities in the best possible way and make that experience an entertaining one at the same time!

What it does

Nittany Study Dens is a web-based mobile-first application that lets a student explore new study spaces within the campus every day. The application has an interactive interface that lets the student choose their study space based on their requirements. We have incorporated a user-based recommendation system that recommends new places to the students if they want the app to find them for them. Students can also input their preferences into a search bar which is processed using NLP to provide the best results. Students can also choose to gamify their patterns by choosing a mission and socializing within the application to make it more entertaining.

How we built it

3 frontend engineers, 1 backend engineer, and an AI engineer worked 24 hrs straight to build this application. We used React and javascript for the UI/UX design, flask, and python for the backend. We also used recommendation systems and natural language processing for better interaction. We have used google-maps API to make the app easier and more interactive.

Challenges we ran into

Backend and AI engines were relatively smooth compared to the frontend design. Making the UI design to make it user-friendly, less cluttered, and at the same time providing as many features as possible was the toughest challenge we faced.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We brainstormed a couple of days ago and came up with this simple idea. By the time of the Hackathon's commencement, we had an entire product in mind that we thought was too ambitious. But as a team, we feel we pulled it off. And, that is something worth being proud of.

What we learned

It is all about teamwork. We enjoyed what we did over the last 24 hours. We are still doing it and it hasn't stopped being fun!

What's next for Nittany Study Dens

A bright future! Perhaps, the den is going to get some limelight after all!

Built With

Submitted to

HackPSU Spring 2023

Created by

I worked on the AI engines for the project. I built a simple recommendation system and an NLP model for search filtering.

Skanda Bharadwaj
I worked on backend API development.

Niramay Vaidya
I worked on the frontend component that was built using ReactJS particularly for mobile devices.
I specifically worked on integrating the user interface with the APIs supported by a backend service that runs the app logic.

Ag Goutham
Front end development built using React JS, majorly integrating the Google Maps API to the application and other features in the front end also.

A.G. Shubhashri
Ankush Mishra