ECE Hackers presents... Vihan Karnala (Vkarnala), Wen Hui Leng (Wleng), Debrina Angelica (Dangelica), and Kaitlyn Liu (Kaitlynl)

Inspiration

We all know the problem, freshmen buy too many meal blocks thinking they will use all of them, and upperclassmen, reluctant to cook or buy meal plans, are always hungry. We want to make it easy for both freshmen to sell their extra meal blocks and upperclassmen to find affordable meals.

What it does

BlockShare connects people who have extra meal blocks to students who need blocks. BlockShare allows for students who have meal blocks to post listings on the times and places they will be at during meal times for other students to buy. It also has a functional chat feature and ratings for block sellers. We have created a world connecting students with meal blocks, to students without meal blocks.

How we built it

Our android app is built completely in Android Studio using Java and XML.

Challenges we ran into

We had difficulty making sure the app appealed to both buyers and sellers of meal blocks and deciding which platform to build the app on. We also struggled to adapt our previous programming experience to Android Studio.

What we learned

We learned how to properly use Github in conjunction with Android Studio. We also learned how to ideate and iterate in a short time frame within our first hackathon setting.

What's next for BlockShare

We look forward to refining our code & publishing the app for actual CMU students to use and adding additional features such as

  • Sellers limited to 1 listing per meal time due to a large number of sellers and buyers
  • Earlies sellers can list blocks is 3 days in advance
  • Sellers and buyers also have to select a 15 minutes time slot for the meet-up in order to facilitate convenience.
  • filtering according to whichever feature buyers prioritize.
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