CruzConnect

Current Categories (many more to come!)
Rideshare Listings
Lost & Found Listings
Recreational Listings
Tutoring Listings

Inspiration

Every day, you see countless posts on the UCSC Snapchats, Instagram, etc. saying they found someone's lost ID, they're looking to split a ride to San Diego, their selling homemade baked goods, someone needs an intermural teammate, etc. So we thought what if there was one place where people could post listings of all sorts, properly organized, searchable, and filterable.

What it does

Students can scroll through listings of all sorts of categories. Weather that's Rideshare for people looking to offer and request a ride somewhere. Listings for buying and selling goods. Listings for Events and Parties being hosted. Tutoring, Sports and Recreation, and anything else that comes to their mind.

Users can easily sort through these with filters and dropdowns. And they can add a multitude of information types when creating a post.

There is a also a AI Chat-Bot built into the Explore Page, that students can discuss with when needing help. If you're looking at buying something, you might want some advice on weather its a good product, pricing, or things to look out for. There might be a listing about a concert for an artist you've never heard of. Gemini could help you get some background on them to help you decide if you want to buy tickets.

How we built it

The website was built using Next.js which is a React based framework. This is how the front end of the website was developed, when it comes to having a grid for all the listings, posts form, home page, etc.

We needed a database so that we could access all the listing that posted. We use MongoDB for our database which then connects to our site through .json type data. This is how its possible for users to make a post and then for other people to see the post as well.

We also integrated Google's Gemini API to have a chatbot to help out people on the website.

All of this is deployed using Vercel from our Git Repository with a .Tech domain.

Challenges we ran into

Getting and Pushing Data to MongoDB proved to be a bit of a challenge. Particularly as the website structure changed and the API code had to be adjusted to work properly after we had thought we had gotten it working. However, we did eventually get it working but we did not get to utilize it to its max potential. We did not have time left to setup authentication nor did we end up adding more filters as well as more categories of information for listings. We planned to have a lot more categories such as Events, Buy/Sell, Rent, etc.

Learning to do web development was also a bit of a challenge, and we spent a lot of time learning how HMTL, CSS, JS, Next.js actually work as we were trying to implement them at the same time.

And then we wanted to implement a chat-bot that could help users scrolling through listings on their buying decisions, renting choices, concert choices, and anything else. We were hoping to have the chat-bot read from the database and give suggestions based on the listings. However, we did not have time to do this, so the chat-bot is implemented but the user must prompt Gemini themselves instead of being done by the website itself.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are very proud that we got a working live website running. And even more than that that we managed to hook up a cloud database to the website so that it is an actual interconnected and interactive website. We are very proud of the concept and think that this is really something that would genuinely be helpful for the UCSC community.

What we learned

We learned a lot, not just about programming, but about collaborating on projects, time management, and decision making.

At some point, you have to decide what you'll be able to complete by a date, and what you'll have to put off. Its a tough choice to make, but its one you have to make. Getting something done is better than nothing done, and we learned that even if you don't think you can do something, you must try, most likely to find yourself further on than you initially thought.

Though its not like we didn't learn anything technical either. For some of us, this was our first time using API's from real companies on a non-academic assignment. So at first it seemed very intimidating. But after quickly (and slowly) reading documentation and a lot of experimentation we managed to learn a a lot about Hosting websites, creating databases, connecting databases to live websites, and UI design, just to name a few.

What's next for CruzConnect

We did a lot, and there's even more to do. We have only scratched the surface of what CruzConnect can do, and fully fledged I think it could rival the likes of Facebook and Craigslist. I think fleshing out the listings system and categorization, while adding features like authentication, and a more integrated AI-model could definitely be on the path for CruzConnect.