DubPool

Inspiration

There are over 25,000 students at UW who commute every day - often students are commuting from the same area and at the same time each day, yet without knowing. In many of these areas, public transportation is unavailable, leading to increased carbon emissions from students driving to campus each day. A carpooling network for UW students would solve this problem.

What it does

DubPool is a platform to create a community of commuting students at UW. Students can enter their schedule and be matched with others that live near them and have a similar schedule. Once matched, students can message one another to confirm the match and set up a carpool!

How we built it

The site is currently a static ReactJS PWA with mock API endpoints for other users and chat messages. The site is stored in an AWS S3 bucket with a CloudFront distribution pointing to our Domain.com domain, DubPool.tech.

Challenges we ran into

The biggest challenge in building this project was, of course, the time crunch. We ended up skipping implementing a backend, instead using mock API endpoints.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud to have brainstormed an idea and implemented a prototype in such a short amount of time, while at the same time getting to know each other and having a fun time!

What we learned

Our team had never met before DubHacks, and we learned the most about one another! Although we all had some experience with React before this project, we each shared our different areas of expertise - learning about IDE features, new (and strange!) JS syntax, and conditional rendering.

What's next for DubPool

Our schedules are always changing, and sometimes it doesn't work out to match two commuters for an entire quarter. The next step for the app is to implement an interface for matching riders and drivers in real-time. Riders can view a map of cars and what areas they will be driving home to, and can then request a ride home if the location is a match. DubPool can also be expanded to other universities, further reducing carbon emissions and connecting students.