Inspiration
I'm a Year 3 student so by now most of my friends are done with studying on campus and like to go and study elsewhere because they are sick of campus. BUT I still go to campus and my friends were the ones with the good recommendation of where to eat. So I was like there has to be a better way to get their recommendations. This led to the development of Bud.
What is Bud?
Bud is a social directory where people can get location-based recommendations from their social network. Users can follow people who they want to receive recommendations from. Unlike normal feeds, users can search the feed by location to find the spots near them. They can also search based on categories. They can pin posts they like and want to get back to later (so if they want to shortlist the place to visit). Users can also see which places are popular as users would be able to indicate in a post if they visited the location or not.
How was Bud built?
It was built using Flutter and Firebase. Some JavaScript was used for Firebase Cloud Functions. The 2 Google Maps API used was the Place Autocomplete API and the Place Details API. Also used the Google Maps SDK (used the plugin) to display maps in the app. I used GeoFlutterFire to query Firestore by location.
Challenges faced
Was a pretty smooth experience using the Google Maps API but am still trying to fix a Phone Authentication bug on iOS that popped up recently. Even with APNs uploaded to Firebase it seems to still indicate that there is an "app credential issue". As this popped up right before finals, I'm still working to fix it, since I'm cramming for finals HAHA.
Accomplishments
Built the whole app within a couple of weeks so quite happy with it (despite the bug since it was working well before). Was my 1st time using Google Maps APIs too, so quite happy with the successful implementation as well and would likely use it again for any future location-based apps.
Things I learnt
I learned how to use the Google Maps API and integrate it into a Flutter application.
Next steps
Right now I'm working to release it on the App Store and Google Play. For the App Store, I would need to figure out the bug 1st. For Google Play, would need to meet the relevant guidelines which includes a reporting content and blocking abusive users function for users as user-generated content apps are required to do so under Google's guidelines.
Also looking at ways to incentivise users to post and also be rewarded for their content creation. Exploring an affiliate marking play which would also introduce a business model for Bud in order to make it self-sustainable. But this is early days and am currently exploring!
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