StudyBuddy

Alone, we can do so little, together we can do so much.

Inspiration

We all found that working together gives us an enriching educational experience. However, we have had issues finding study groups at the beginning of our courses and sometimes even throughout the year. This led us to build our Study Buddy app.

What it does

Study buddy is a platform where you can find other people from your classes to collaborate and study with in real-time.

How we built it

We started by creating a Figma design for our application to get the basic wireframes down. We then began developing the backend, which utilized CockroachDB for the database. After a few hours, we were able to create an API server that interfaced with CockroachDB Serverless and moved on to designing and implementing a WebSocket interface to handle the real-time aspects of our app.

After finishing the bulk of the backend, we began creating the mobile app. We first switched from making a React Native app to a mobile React web app due to time constraints and because the team was more familiar with web development. Later in the night, we implemented Google Authentication for logging users into the application. Meanwhile, a few of us were working on component implementation and CSS design. Then, for the rest of the time, we worked on polishing what we had and completing some of our user flows.

Challenges we ran into

We had problems with React Native which led us to improvise and switch to a webapp. This was because team members had different operating systems, and downloading React Native was taking too much time on the WiFi. We also had trouble with setting up CockroachDB with Knex.js, and switched to using CockroachDB with Sequalize as a result. Additionally, the real-time pairing algorithm was much more complex than we had initially thought.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were able to get Google OAuth working, build a real-time WebSockets interface, and finish an MVP for our product. We were also able to brainstorm future feature updates.

What we learned

Many of the individual team members learned how to use different tools, such as Figma and React. We all learned how to use CockroachDB's Serverless offering.

What's next for StudyBuddy

We will likely add more features and test our app with real students. In the future, we may generalize our app to all schools and university or even add a mode to use our app in the workplace.