AnonyNUS

We have our homepage for users to choose to log in using Google or NUS email.
Users can choose to sign up using their NUS email.
Users can choose to login using their NUS email.
Users can add friends by entering their nickname.
Users can also view their friends and chat with them!
Users can choose to make their own group to talk about modules or interests etc.
Users can view a list of available group chats in this page.

Inspiration

Students nowadays are generally reserved people, especially in Singapore. To make them comfortable in opening up to others (and of course, making friends), we have come up with the AnonyNUS app to encourage interactions among NUS students and NUS alumni as well. This app allows for the sharing of resources and work discussions. By allowing for anonymity and students/alumni in the same chat room, they have similar interests and hence are likely to be comfortable interacting with one another.

What it does

It is similar to any other popular chat app like Whatsapp & Telegram, but one can only log in into the app using his/her NUS email, since this app is NUS student exclusive. The students can then add chat rooms that are related to the courses/modules/co-curricular activities they are attending. Students are warned that their emails can be tracked back in the event that they cyberbully/behave inappropriately, and that disciplinary action will be the consequence of such actions. Alternatively, other students can report a student for malicious behaviour through a report function and if these reports are excessive, the student gets banned from the chat room.

How we built it

Dart and Flutter were used to make the app and Firebase was used to handle their emails in a database for logging in.

Challenges we ran into

We weren't familiar with the Dart and Flutter frameworks, hence had to learn on the spot. As expected, many errors and solutions exchanged blows, on top of the inevitable fatigue from insufficient sleep. This hindered our progress greatly, giving us the challenge of time constraints.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Team bonding and synergy, even with a beginner to coding on the team. We made the app look aesthetically pleasing as well.

What we learned

A new coding language is a new experience. With the new experience, we gain a greater breadth and depth in our coding skills. We also learnt that splitting the workload according to what we do better in achieves better team synergy and efficiency.

What's next for AnonyNUS

Other educational institutes can inherit the idea in order to make not just NUS youths more comfortable with each other, but other youths in general as well. The app has yet to be translated onto a website form for computer users. Who knows? If this app gets popular, it may even go to the extent of being an islandwide (or even global!) platform for students from the same courses/modules/hobbies&interests to interact. The app may, in future, transform to have threads like Reddit so as to have a better organisation of chats, for example, separating "Leisurely Chat", "Resources" and "Discussions", if there are too many members and chats get messy. The report function also needs implementation, and a minimum cap of reports on a student to auto-ban the student.