StudBud

Landing Page
Login
Resources Section
Classes pulled from NYU API
Mentors pulled from Firebase DB
Discussion Board
Profile
New Submission Page

Inspiration

As students, we know the struggle of finding guidance on the busy campus scene. The hassle of scheduling appointments with advisors/professors and having to wait what might seem like years is no more. We saw a need for StudBud by reflecting on our daily lives and coming to a collective agreement on what our colleges lacked. StudBud encourages community engagement within the local college circle and provides a service that many places don't.

What it does

StudBud is a platform that pairs students with other students, also referred to as mentors, based on class history and interests. Any student can voluntarily be a mentor while still being eligible for mentorship. For any given class, StudBud provides a references directory pertaining to that class, an open discussion board and a list of mentors that have taken that particular class and are willing to help others. Not only do the mentees benefit from this free-of-charge platform, but the mentors do as well. Their contributions to the community are tracked on their profiles. Furthermore, they can link their StudBud profiles on their resumes and show employers their level of engagement in their community. A win-win situation!

How we built it

We built StudBud using React, Firebase and the Ant.Design UI library for some awesome looking components. :)

Challenges we ran into

Coming from more of a Node.js/Mongo background, we had a hard time configuring Firebase to our likings. Additionally, it was the first time we used React Router and didn't bother with Redux. This didn't seem to be a problem at first, but as the project exponentially got larger, then state management became a nightmare. We ended up rushing in the end since we spent a bunch of time on a single bug and our clean codebase came crumbling down.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Even though people usually fake the login for Hackathons, our team managed to setup a working login/signup system via Firebase. It took us decently long to make, but it was well worth it in the end since we had learned so much.

What we learned

We spent a good amount of time drawing out the layout and this proved to be quite efficient. We're definitely going to frame our future projects like we did with StudBud. Additionally, we learned not to spend an absurd of time on a single bug. This cost us dearly in the end and we had to leave out key features because of this.

What's next for StudBud

We really enjoyed the short time we spent working on StudBud. So much that we would like to see it become a reality. Our future plans include, revamping the code base by cleaning out all the junk, making it mobile friendly and introducing other technologies such as Redux and AI.