Dawg | Devpost

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Inspiration

Teens and young adults are amid the social media revolution. The current generation of college students include some of the youngest folks to feel social media's impacts, both positive and negative. Media apps are great at providing quick snapshots of what people are up to. However, this usually forces a sacrifice of face-to-face connection, causing feelings of loneliness, anxiety, emptiness. Don't just superficially keep up with others, really check in by asking what's up on Dawg! Dawg is an app that pairs friends near or far into a video call, allowing a two-way check-in for just a few minutes every day.

What it does

Dawg randomly shuffles your friends on the app and matches you with one individual to video call once a day to check in. When you complete the call, you are prompted to input something about the other person -- a conversation topic, compliment, or status. A screenshot of the interaction is also taken when you complete the call. Both the input comment and screenshot are uploaded to a feed where you are able to see what your other friends are up to, who they matched with, and the topic of their conversations.

If you keep up with daily call, you can maintain a streak which will be displayed on your profile.

How we built it

We utilized Figma to develop a basic framework and prototyping flow for how we want the app to look like when fully functioning. We then moved onto using React Native, Firebase, JS, CSS, HTML, Expo, and Github to develop a functioning version of Dawg.

Challenges we ran into

Our team was composed of two first-time hackers, and 3/4 of the Dawg owners had never used Figma or React Native before, and we all had limited app development experience. Building and testing an app with our tech stack of Figma, Firebase, React Native, JS, CSS, HTML, Expo, and Git was a steep learning curve.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The Figma frames and current prototypes of the app were difficult to implement especially due to our ability to only test changes on a single laptop, so it was a great victory to create what we did. We are also idea's novelty, as we strongly believe it will have an impact and the potential to change conventions of social media.

What we learned

In addition to the tech stack, we also learned a lot about project management, dividing roles up amongst members, how to adjust work to meet deadlines and execute tasks in short periods of time.