Bee Social

Inspiration

Bees are notoriously industrious and social animals.

One challenge we face as students in this time of quarantine is that we often lack the motivation to carry on with our regular activities as if nothing were happening. We are also aware that many people are in isolation, and that it might be hard for them to get in touch with others, and especially to meet new friends.

We want to give our users the feeling that we are all in this hive together, although not physically. Let's inspire each other to be a bit more like the bees and cooperate to be motivated and get things done, all while respecting the social distancing rule.

What it does

Is there something you've been wanting to do all day but just could not seem to get started with? Select an activity and we will pair you up with a buddy that is in your same situation. You can confront each other in the available chat and give tips on how you manage to get things done in these trying times.

How we built it

We prepared a small prototype to give a flavor of what the interaction in Bee Social feels like in the demo video.

A REST API serves the application with lists of possible activities. The API is meant to make it easy to extend the application to support more refined features.

Challenges we ran into

Time management in a hackathon setting. We started too slow, and ended up not being able to do everything the way we had imagined it. Also JavaScript and frameworks.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We collaborated only shouting a little at each other.

Moreover, we really like our poject and we are glad our enthusiasm was shared by many others we asked to evaluate the idea.

What we learned

That we are all in this together, and that we can actively do something to help with this situation, however small our contribution.

What's next for Bee Social

We plan to transform the prototype into a small working application.

The following steps include the addition of some more features, such as

the possibility to audio/video-chat with the assigned buddy;
the possibility to keep track of our activities;
a step-by-step guide to help make the most of the activities we are planning to do (e.g. if you want to start a study session, you could start by cleaning your desk, making some tea, before you take out your supplies, so that you get into the flow ;) ).

If you are inspired by our project let us know, maybe we can collaborate!