CoffeeChats

Inspiration

Due to the pandemic, many people have felt isolated due to socially distancing and quarantine. Initially, we thought to use Instagram or Facebook to meet and make more friends online, but people weren't really on the platform to connect genuinely without the biases of appearance to form great conversations that start a long-term friendship. Therefore, our team developed a platform which allows people to have deep meaningful conversations without judgments on their profiles or appearances. More importantly, CoffeeChats may lead to a friendship which isn't based upon appearance and eventually users may meet in person through coffee incentives that we will be providing.

What it does

CoffeeChats is a user-friendly, anonymous platform which allows users to interact with individuals to have entertaining conversations based on a selected topic. They are initially limited to a temporary anonymous chat, and after that temporary period, users receive the option to choose if they want to converse and connect more with the people they were just in the chat with. If both, or all three users agree, they will be redirected to a permanent chat where they will be able to see each others' profiles and possibly expand on their previous anonymous conversation.

How we built it

For our front-end technology, we used react-native to design a cross-platform app between Android, iPhone, and web. We used Firebase for our back-end service.

Challenges we ran into

React native is very friendly, but sometimes the code would work for iOS but still not work for Windows and vice versa. We also had to handle collisions in the situations when users wanted to match into a group. There was a lot of dynamic programming involved which needed to be implemented to handle such issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team, we were able to work extremely efficiently. We were able to design and code the entire framework within such a short period. Our app is also fully functional and looks very nice in the UI.

What we learned

We learned a ton ranging from styling to handling collisions and match-making users. We learned the importance of communication, designing on Figma, and how to work together in an agile environment.

What's next for CoffeeChats

CoffeeChats plans to offer a level-up feature called the Espresso Pass. As you engage more in the app and get good responses you will be leveling up to exclusive features. We want to also implement notifications in the future so that others can see if you messaged them.