ARGON

By students, for students, Argon makes finding a place to live simple, safe and stable– just like Argon itself.

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Inspiration

As second year students ourselves, we understand how difficult it is to find housing, especially straight out of first year residence. We hear our peers who are trying to find suitable roommates to fill vacancies, those who are looking for affordable housing and those who simply want to get along with their existing roommates. All these different perspectives are showcased in the people around us and we thought to ourselves: why not find a way for them to connect and find what each other needs? And so, Argon was created.

What it does

Argon is a platform for students to find roommates or housing, whatever they need. As soon as you enter the website, you're able to log on and create an account with your personal information. Then, you will be prompted to fill in a personality quiz where it will match you with 1 of 8 roommate personalities (similar to MBTI). Once the set up is all done, you will be able to start swiping! Swipe Mode is where Argon will match you with a roommate that it thinks will suit you and you can either swipe left or right to start messaging or reject. On Swipe Mode, you can switch between two modes, Renter and Leaser. Renter Mode is where you're looking for housing matches and Leaser Mode is where you're looking for roommates to fill your vacancies. If you're tired of Swipe Mode, there is also a Search Mode on the side where you can filter and browse through listings on your own (only available as a Renter). Once you've matched with a listing or a roommate, then you can start messaging and make arrangements!

How we built it

  1. We use HTML, CSS, and javascript to build the frontend, and Python with fastapi for backend. During the development process, one of our developers work on the landing and galley page, while the other build the swipe cards functionality. This ensures smooth and efficient development.

  2. I build the website from first creating the backbone in html knowing where each element should land, than move to CSS, and move the elements around, I googled some cool css and used it within our website.

Challenges we ran into

  1. We started off not knowing how to use Figma at all, so it was challenging for us to try and make all the buttons work for the developers to have an idea of how we wanted the platform to work. The interactive toggle buttons and sliders were really difficult for us to implement. It was also hard working on Figma because the realm of code that we knew was a lot less than the actions Figma could grant.

  2. The first step was challenging, knowing what to build and what to do for the next 24 hours is difficult for us, but as we brainstorm this challenge quickly got resolved. As a beginner in HTML, it’s a pain to move each elements around the page to where it should land, through this, I learned command such as display: flex and align-items. and so on. Sometimes, there are lots of error where it made some element hidden under other elements. The next major challenge is to fix the slider for price range and distance from campus and the filter helper function for the website.

  3. As a beginner in web development, I struggled in slow development speed, especially in styling with CSS. Also, this is the first time I build a backend with fastapi, and therefore I spent a big chunk of my time learning. I am glad that I made it.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

During the hackathon, we began by conceptualizing the design of our website. We are proud that we were able to successfully develop it, and the final product closely matched our original vision. Bringing our concept to life in a functional and visually coherent website was a significant achievement for our team.

What's next for ARGON

We aim to partner with universities across Canada to expand our user base, allowing more students to benefit from the app. At the same time, collaborating with universities will help ensure that Argon is properly regulated and certified, providing a trustworthy and reliable platform for all users. In the future, we would want it to be as widespread and as wellknown as Canvas.

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