Inspiration
In the very beginning of Hackpsu, some of our teammates were talking about struggles finding social events on Friday nights. That’s when we thought of a concept that would eventually become the birth of Buddi. We wanted to build an application that allows users to find a community building event as easy and as fast as possible.
What it does
Buddi's main features consist of, hosting, joining events to your profile. Users will first be able to create an account which allows application to exchange data with Firebase, a cloud system, to store user data. Then, they will be able to choose a category that best fit their interests. There will be a list of events that are available live and local where the user can join any of them as long as the maximum capacity of the event has not been reached. Users can also host events. Within the post feature, we included features that allows the host to input event title, max capacity for the event, time, detailed description (optional) and a photo upload (optional). With our application features including as little text boxes as possible, the user experience becomes much more fluid and time efficient.
How we built it
Before creating any code or design, we started out with sketches on the classroom whiteboards. Once some basic sketches and feature ideas were constructed, we took our components to Figma to start designing our UI. We really wanted to incorporate this year's hackathon theme, 'Vaporwave' and as you can see, we stuck to it. From there the Figma designs were replicated within Flutter and Visual Studio Code. Majority of Flutter code consists of the language Dart which is similar to Java. For login and post features, Firebase was used to store users' information along with post data.
Challenges we ran into
One main challenge that we had was the learning curve that comes with Flutter. Of our team, we had one member with enough prior experience to support us in the learning process, but it was difficult, to say the least. Most of the process was the team collaborating to figure out the best visual designs, as well as the best ideal functionalities. This part of the process went smoothly but downloading and using Flutter was much more involved. Multiple team members ran into trouble downloading Flutter and getting it to function alongside Visual Studio Code due to storage issues and finding the right PATH to save it in. After we downloaded Flutter, we watched lots of YouTube and looked at model codes so that we could familiarize ourselves with the language.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of the fact that we were able to achieve our primary goals within the time constraints. Our focus was on minimalism while maintaining all the features necessary to make the app usable and enjoyable. We didn't want to waste time on any features that people might not use, or that could make things more complicated than necessary. Additionally, we are proud of the aesthetics of our app. We worked hard to stick to the "Vapor-Wave" theme and make sure that the app looked interesting but also professional and simply.
What we learned
The biggest thing we learned from this event was that all of us are capable of meeting new people and creating an amazing product that we are all proud of. We learned that time management is key in solving problems within time restrictions. We also learned that clear communication is a must in brainstorming. On the technical side, we all learned how to use Figma to design the UI of our application as well as develop the aesthetics. In terms of actually building the application, we all learned new things about Flutter, whether it was introductory level commands or a better understanding of the construction of an entire app. In addition, we are all more familiar with Figma and how to collaborate on graphic design ideas.
What's next for Buddi
There are multiple features we brainstormed that we were not able implement due to time restraint. But here is what would be next for Buddi:
Setting local radius so you can see what’s going on only nearby kind of like Yik Yak Interactive Map Feature- Map would be better for those who are actively looking for communities instead of a list as it’s more visual and interactive Automatically uploaded to the map when making a posting Can select a place in the map and create a post based on the coordinates
- Cooperate with other SNS for security
- Authentication feature for security
- Story feature alongside the post
- What’s Hot feature locally and globally
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