UofT Connect

Title Screen
Feed Page
Discovery Page
Dashboard Page
AWS used in the project

Inspiration

Hack the Student Life challenged us to fix everyday friction for UofT students. The biggest pain we kept running into was how fragmented campus connections are—research opportunities buried in listservs, alumni advice hidden in random Slacks, profs who want collaborators but have no channel to reach students. We wanted one respectful, university-branded space where everyone across campus could show up authentically and find the right people faster.

What it does

UofT Connect is a single hub for students, instructors, alumni, and mentors. The app surfaces curated profiles, posts, and research groups, lets you message people instantly, and keeps everything authenticated through UofT email. Students can find study buddies or research teams, profs can promote openings, and alumni can offer mentorship—all in one consistent interface that feels like it belongs to the university.

How we built it

We built this web app based on Tailwind, Next.js, and TypeScript. DynamoDB is used to store user profiles, posts and messages, and Amazon Lambda and Amazon Cognito is used for the email validation so that only UofT students have access to the web app. Lastly, we hosted the website on AWS Amplify.

Challenges we ran into

We found it challenging to manage user account so that each user can post, comment, and can access to their own profiles without bugs. Also we tried to make the UI match with the UofT vibes (the colors and the overall theme) which also took us a long time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The live features such as chat is working perfectly, and the likes and comments on the posts is updated live only with a small latency. The discovery page shows organized results that is easy to understand, and a clean UI that is easy to navigate. AI matching helps user to discover relevant connections. Also the website is posted on the AWS Amplify so university students and instructors can access anywhere, anytime.

What we learned

We learned how we can integrate services provided by Amazon Web Service to the actual project we have created, such as DynamoDB, Lambda, and Cognito. Also this project gave us new inspiration of how should the connection between the professor and students can be widened to activate learning experience.

What's next for UofT Connect

We want to have a personal organizer section that gives guidance based on how students are performing, informed by instructors. also we want to send people email notifications on similar topics/interests with Amazon SES.