What inspired your project
As new students and students returning from online studying start adapting to their studies on campus, they face some difficulties finding social connections. There are different sites where students can meet others studying the same subjects, such as Facebook groups and group chats, Discord, Canvas, but they lack coordination and a sense of connection within the UoM community. Additionally, a lot of the study groups do not end up working out because of the intimidating nature of being in a large group chat, conflicted schedules, inactive accounts, etc.
The purposes of our project
Designed by and for UoM students, the project is a social networking site that connects students studying the same subject or having the same study preferences together.
1) Facilitate friendships among UoM students who have just begun to adjust to on-campus studying, when they did not have much chance to build connections via online-learning.
2) Create a coherent platform where students can arrange meet-ups with others without being wary of Facebook strangers. Other social media platforms provide a space for different communities at once, but we want this to be catered towards students with the purpose of encouraging positive studying.
3) Make it easier to find peers studying the same course - as different people use different social media platforms on an irregular basis. In terms of how it ties in within current media, our project addresses the confidentiality and security that Facebook subject group chats don’t have, by requiring users to have a valid university student email in order to use the platform.
What technologies this project was built with
Front end: HTML, CSS, Javascript, React
Back end: Python, Flask, MongoDB
UX/UI Design: Figma
How we built our project
We brainstormed potential ideas and how they tie in with the theme of media. We created a prototype on Figma, then worked on frontend to accommodate the design and to obtain user input. The backend team worked on the matching algorithm which would be used to match students up, and storing and retrieving user data from a MongoDB database.
What we learned
We definitely learnt a lot from this hackathon - since for many of us this was our first time working in web development as a team, we learnt that communication between the frontend, backend, and design teams is very important
Challenges we faced.
Communication between frontend and backend; we don't have a standard protocol for the communication
Utilizing a variety of new platforms as a beginner: Flask, MongoDB, Postman etc.
Third party resources used
Used Postman for the first time to test the APIs
Used MongoDB to store/access user’s data
What's next for BearUp
- Expanding support to other campuses & universities in Australia and worldwide.
- Adding more ways of matching students with students.
- More customization of study preferences.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.