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Database Schema
Inspiration:
Most UW students can remember their first couple weeks here. Some of us went in with a handful of friends, but trying to integrate yourself into such a massive community is overwhelming regardless. Despite the incredibly diverse range of RSOs and other on-campus activities happening daily, there is currently no truly effective way to figure out what is happening on campus today that might be relevant to you.
What it does:
Dub Cal helps curb this problem.
Dub Cal takes event information from Facebook, the UW Calendar, list servs, and manual input to create a cohesive and interactive student calendar. Students can check out RSOs and events based on their interests, searching from suggested topics such as music and arts to more specific suggestion by user input. The application allows students to see how close they are to an event going on at that very moment, and who is already at the event. Here, we’re hoping to promote a sense of community and togetherness that can often feel difficult at a large-scale university.
How we built it
Designed a fully-normalized, relational database, hosted on AWS RDS services running on MySQL. Stores users, RSO groups, events, and the relationships between these entities. Implemented an interface in Python to abstract interactions with the database using SQLAlchemy module. Used the Facebook public API to pull down data for RSO groups on Facebook and write it to our database Set up an AWS server that serves HTML via Django. Server also hosts our database interface for data access, allowing the rendering code to read and write information about events and how people interact with them
Challenges we ran into
We ran into a series of challenges while working this weekend. One of our primary difficulties was the front-end development. With three people talented in back-end, one who works in UI, and a PM, we had almost all of the pieces necessary for putting together a special project: except for a front-end developer. The coordination between UI and back-end can be difficult on a tight schedule, so we struggled to get something fully functional on the back side and interactive on the front side that looked like our initial vision.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud of the fact that we have multiple elements to show off this piece. With a case study video, an interactive InVision prototype, and the backend all completely fleshed out for our mobile-responsive site, we worked on three elements that came together to show what we hoped to create.
What we learned
We learned how great it is working in a team together, for one. Regardless of the outcome of the project and this weekend, working as a group of five was a terrific learning experience. We all learned a little from each other all weekend, Natalie (UI design) and Tom (PM) about the coding aspect and John, Colin, and Novin about the app idea and design.
What's next for Dub Cal
In terms of what’s next for us, we would love to fully get this product together and running with the backend work and the UI designs to be a service that students could use. As seniors and juniors all attending UW, we all know how difficult it can be to get involved and find something you’re passionate about while attempting to find friends. This app, even after this weekend and the work we’ve done here, is something we hope to continue on as we see its merits for the larger UW community and incoming freshman. In terms of the competitive analysis bit, while a UW Events app does currently exist and others have attempted to create similar systems, this is the only application to provide real-time feedback on what events are currently happening, who is there, and in general how to sort through all of the RSOs and events on campus. Similarly, it is the only application that scrapes from different platforms to provide a cohesive identity for UW events.
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