Bus Buddy

Twilio text to phone

Inspiration

As commuter students, we all know the struggle of having an extra BUSING 101 block on our timetables 2 times a day. Want to sleep? Naw, too rocky. Want to go on Instagram? No money and not enough data. Especially since COVID, we barely get to meet up with friends and talk with new people. But… what if students could use that commute time WISELY and make new connections with people in their own community? Meet Bus Buddy, the all-in-one app for commuting in a whole new way. With a few simple clicks, users can be matched with others who bus on the route as them.

What does it do

After you create an account, you can plan a trip for either an existing bus route that you’re familiar with or start a completely new route with google maps. Bus Buddy will pair you up with anyone who fits with your time and schedule. During your trip, Bus Buddy also provides fun icebreakers for you to learn more about your bus buddy and hopefully make a new friend! If you don’t have a destination in mind and just want to explore the city, hop onto the “explore” page. Choose a destination, meet up with a buddy, learn more about your community!

How does it work

Check out our prototype on Figma. We also implemented a Twilio API separately that will notify matched commuter buddies together to take their trip together! Although we didn’t have time to integrate the 2 into a web application, you can view the Twillo prototype here.

Challenges we ran into

Most of us were new to hackathons and had very minimal experience in working within a team. We also had no prior experience in using prototyping tools such as Figma, but wIth countless google searches, youtube tutorials, and mentor sessions, we were able to create an application that we are passionate about