UPlay!

main dashboard
registration screen
email verification screen
sports preferences screen
dashboard
sport view dashboard
player view dashboard
activity [requested]
activity [accept/reject]
activity [accepted]

Inspiration

As freshmen, adjusting to the fast-paced environment in a new, huge campus can make it difficult to find people to play your favorite sports with at a time that fits everyone’s schedule. One of our friends found himself in this problem as he was eager to play but didn’t know anyone else who shared his interest in tennis, let alone someone whose busy schedule worked with his. Realizing this is a common problem, we built this app to help connect students like him with each other.

What it does

UPlay! is a web-based app designed for busy college students with a passion for sports to meet like-minded students and have a good time! The app asks users for their sports preferences and, while using the app, shares their live location with other users interested in playing the same sport(s) as them. Active users can click on other active users’ locations to request to play with them. If accepted, both users will be connected in real-time.

How we built it

After coming up with our basic idea, we designed our initial UI using Figma. Once we had a clear idea of what we were making, we researched different frameworks and APIs to best implement our solution. Then, we got to the hard part of coding it, which led to many debugging and paired programming sessions. We also changed elements of our UI in real-time so that we could get an accurate depiction of our idea. We also collaborated in person and used the whiteboards in the ILC to help formulate our thoughts better. In the end, UPlay! uses the following technologies: Node.js, Express.js, Mapbox API, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, MongoDB, and Socket.io. Our primary IDE was Visual Studio Code. We also used GitHub to maintain our code.

Challenges we ran into

With little experience in web development, we had to learn a lot from scratch. Namely, JavaScript, web frameworks, and implementing APIs for the map. Working with Socket.io to send real-time notifications also required a lot of tinkering. Specifically, working with these new APIs and frameworks, we had to do a lot of debugging in order to achieve desired results. Additionally, our initial idea was far more ambitious, but due to time and learning constraints, we had to spend time stripping away some of our desired features so that our final product could be achieved within the allotted time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As beginners, we are proud that we learned how to develop a web application, from the initial stages of designing on a whiteboard all the way to implementing the back end.

We are also incredibly proud of each other for the tireless dedication we all showed to this project. Going into this, we were excited just to gain experience, so seeing our idea transform into a functional app was super fulfilling.

What we learned

While building UPlay!, we learned team collaboration, leadership, time management, resourcefulness, and new languages and frameworks.

The past 36 hours of our first hackathon fostered our learning in domains including both technical knowledge and social skills. We got to use technologies that we hadn’t heard of before. Under the pressure of the time limit, we could learn to use such APIs and frameworks just to the extent required to finish the app. All of this pushed us to develop our time management and resourcefulness skills. Working in a team, trying to keep track of and manage what each person is or should be doing was a little tricky. Dividing the work among us while having consensus on important decisions and brainstorming ideas helped us improve our leadership and teamworking skills.

What's next for UPlay!

As an initial idea, we mainly focused on connecting the players of UMass Amherst. Our future aspirations for the app include the use of a 4 step strategy.

Step 1 focuses on publishing the app to UMass students through 3 sub-stages. The first substage is a closed beta testing phase. This phase is where we release a limited release of our app to interested UMass students/volunteers in order to test and receive feedback. The second substage, open beta testing, is when we release our app to everyone in UMass for another round of testing and feedback receiving. Lastly, we publish the app after fixing any bugs and taking into consideration any relevant feedback.

Step 2 is where we release UPlay! 2.0, our second version of the app which includes new updates and features like a chat feature to chat with others in the app, a casual player profile that includes player stats, hours played, sports played, and more stats, and finally, a dashboard feature which includes skill level-specific matchmaking, sport-specific details like rules, how to play, etc.

Step 3 is our expansion plan where we plan to expand to more campuses across the country.

We wish to work with the 5 colleges in the UMass Five Colleges Consortium to bring our app to them before a nationwide release.
Analyzing map data from the colleges and implementing our features with the campus' facilities
Collaborating with on-campus recreational departments in order to integrate our app with their services

Step 4 is where we plan to push out the fourth edition of our app, UPlay! 4.0.

Gamification:
- Leaderboard by sport and an overall campus-wide leaderboard
- Competitions Hub: Creates tournaments with brackets/competition-like experience for users This applies to all sports and is run seasonally Prizes/awards to winners of major tournaments
Professional Player Profile - For the try-hards
- Ranked matches add stats to your professional profile. This determines your ranking from beginner - expert. We would also be incorporating Skill-based matchmaking
Professional Gamification
- Consists of a competitions hub but with professional, more serious sports players
Allows you to share your profile with a unique link to showcase your professional sporting career
Last but not least, DARK THEME WILL BE COMING!! We know y’all like it light on your eyes ;)