Chum Buddies

DM page
Starting a DM
Finding friends 2
Finding friends 1
Profile editing page 1
Friend list
Potential friends
Profile editing page 2
Sign in page
Account creation page
Mobile UI 2
Mobile UI 1
Mobile UI 3

Inspiration

Finding friends is difficult, as is evident by the frequent posts to r/usyd where students vent about their frustrations in finding friends. The theme of blocks inspired us to examine what blocks exist that prevent these students from easily connecting with others when they are surrounded by others while at university. We decided that the addition of language translation features would also add to the theme of blocks, and would be a good accessibility feature for the many international students who would prefer to use their home language.

What it does

Chum Buddies builds a feed of other USyd students on the app who have been rated as like minded by our matching algorithm. From there, the user can accept to send messages to our matches, and hopefully build a deeper connection to eventually meet in a club or other activity on Campus.

How we built it

The frontend of the project used the Vite build tool, using React for UI, JavaScript for programming, and MSPaint for additional artwork. The backend uses Firebase for database management and Python for matching logic and connection to the Google Cloud Translation API.

Challenges we ran into

Managing parallel work streams, as a team of 5 people it was often difficult for everyone to work collaboratively and make steady progress without doing duplicate work or waiting for other work to be completed by other members. Connecting to Google Cloud API took some trial and error, and had some initial issues creating a valid project and creating API keys.