Caravan - Travel with New Friends!

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Inspiration

The experience of traveling is something that everyone should be able to relish. People enjoy making these experiences with friends and family. But, we believe that anyone should be able to have a fantastic travel experience even just as an individual. We wanted to make sure that anyone who wants to travel should be able to have a great experience and meet new people! The days of complicated coordination are over. In an age where face-to-face interaction has been declining, Caravan exhibits an unforgettable solution. Let us take over and give you an adventure and the chance to make lifelong friends! And so, we present Caravan - an innovative new iOS app for social gatherings to extend to new heights, depths, and distances!

What it does

Caravan changes the way people think about travel. No longer does one have to organize with friends or plan extremely ahead. Caravan offers the opportunity for people to find a trip and join a “caravan” of new people across the world in a travel experience. By bringing together different people in new ways, we can make a significant social impact - we are bridging the gap between social networking and real adventure.

With our modular and aesthetically pleasing app, users browse a dynamic catalog of available locations. After selecting a location, the user is presented with trips that are organized by approved guides. With a glance, users can browse various types of upcoming trips within places across the world. With diverse dates, exciting trip headlines, and popularity metrics, any user can express interest in any trip they desire. They can then view more trip details, contact the guide with any questions, and sign up for further communication and updates through the app. Adventure is one click away! Bringing people together has never been done in a way that combines social connection with a quality travel experience in the way Caravan does. After the trip of a lifetime, our users bond with their trip mates, and they have grown not just their memories, but their friends! And who knows, you might just meet your future partner too!

Other transformative features of the Caravan app include dynamic profiles, where users can customize their profiles, keep and share records of past and upcoming trips, and show off cool badges they earn from making new experiences awarded by Caravan.

Caravan also takes social networking to a new level, with Caravan’s community blog center, called Campsite. Here, users can share blog posts through pictures and stories detailing their adventures and encourage others to take the plunge!

Last but not least, Caravan provides a way for users to communicate. Whether it be questions regarding an upcoming trip, discussing local restaurants to visit during the trip, or even just swapping stories with a fellow Caravner, our app changes the way we think about traveling and makes it accessible and a reality for anyone.

How we built it

We approached HackGT in a heavily engineering-focused methodology. Starting, we analyzed the participation packet and began to paint a picture of possible avenues. After completing our research period, the team commenced a brainstorming phase, where we wrote down possible ideas. These ideas held a wide range of topics to them and exciting software stacks. Next, we filtered down our thoughts through multiple filters such as our collective skill group, a niche in terms of topics, and overall enthusiasm for the project. After numerous discussions, the conclusion was made that we would pursue Caravan. Initially, we looked at creating a progressive web application but pivoted after looking at previous years' contenders. Finally, the decision was made to make the Caravan app through the SwiftUI framework. For our software, we utilized Object Orientated Programming and modular programming practice throughout our codebase. In addition, the team used git as version control to divide the problems into small tasks and seamlessly merge them. With our team breaking tasks into the smallest parts, we actively tested the codebase through the xcode's simulation suite, which allowed us to craft a beautiful UI/UX and test functionality. Through our wide range of tools, we were able to collaborate and create beautiful software.

Challenges we ran into

We are dedicated to excelling in both UI development and Database development because we believe that a delicate UI and a stable, fully functioning backend database is equally important. Along with our UI design and development, we have established Firebase connections and programmed working functions to get, post, and manipulate API structures and variables. However, the separation of UI development and Database development resulted in mistakes of file merging and sorting: the divergence in two GitHub lines caused the problem in merging UI and database. Next time, we will pay more attention to details, and management of working files. In addition to these challenges, the general time constraint prevented us from implementing other interactive features.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of Caravan and we believe that our app will be able to significantly change the way people meet each other, while also giving our users the opportunity of a lifetime. We are proud of the appealing UI and experience users get, and we are even more proud of the services we provide to users. Our team came together and put 110% into this project, and we grew both as computer scientists and global innovators.

What we learned

HACKGT8 and the creation of Caravan taught us a lot. In addition to efficient teamwork, division of labor, design and development, the learning of technologies was definitely something we experienced. From picking up front-end Swift and SwiftUI app development skills to back-end Firebase database integration, we learned a lot in the process of creating this full-stack application.

What's next for Caravan

Caravan has the potential to expand into something even greater and there are a couple of thing we would start with:

We are looking to develop our back-end and database connection. First, we plan to develop the application to offer more user-friendly, targeted services for travelers. We will not only design and provide platforms for organized group traveling of travelers with shared interests and passion. Also, we will implement recommendation algorithms and analytical algorithms to better recommend favorite places, routes, travel friends, and prices.

Enabling cross-platform functionality is a goal of ours. Partnering with other social media leaders like Instagram and Snapchat.

We also want to introduce mechanisms for “verified creators” to create communities where they can share their stories and adventures, progress their brand, and give our users a more personal experience.

We also hope to partner with all parts of the travel experience such as the hospitality industry and the food industry to help our users receive a complete and comfortable experience.