Envios

Link

Website
Repo

Inspiration

Envios originate from the Portugese word “envio”, roughly translates to “ship.” This app is a dating app where people are matched by others instead of finding their own soulmates. This idea originates from the common slang “to ship” which means “to desire two people to enter a romantic relationship.”

What it does

Compared to other apps where you are constantly trying to find your own future love, Envios lets you take the cupid’s seat and vote on ships of other people. This fundamental difference results in several important changes compared to standard dating apps:

-People are incentivized to ship relationships that work. Users that make correct ship assessments are going to be rewarded to encourage people to ship long-lasting relationships instead of randomly shipping people. -The app is fundamentally altruistic. Users will know when ships they’ve selected worked and feel rewarded knowing that they helped spark someone’s relationship. -Often on other dating apps, people are not self-aware. They tend to only go for people better than them thinking they are a much better person than they are or they might strike low and undervalue what they can bring to a relationship. Envios lets the matching be done by the public, thus, one’s delusions will not impact one's chances of finding one's ideal lovers.

How we built it

We build the app using:

ReactJs for the backend.
Firebase for the database.
Js, Jquery, Boostrap for the Front End

Challenges we ran into

Lack of time

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Everything works as intended and our pitch sounds great.

What we learned

Cry

What's next for Envios

Envios in sailing for success but to match couples more effectively, our ship needs some upgrades down the current.

First, we need to address some concerns, people that ship incorrectly or maliciously. For this, we decided to weigh the values of people’s ships so that ships made by people that are good at shipping count for a lot more than ships made by people that make poor shipping decisions. To determine the weights of each person’s ship, we will need to forge an algorithm that can effectively determine a person’s ability based on the number of ships made and the success rate.

Second is the enhancement of the user experience. We want our app to be fun and engaging. People should be excitedly waiting for cupid’s next arrow. We want to give the users tools to build up relationships slowly but strongly. When sufficient people vote on your relationship with someone, you will start simple. One message at a time and wait for a one message response. If you two enjoy the back and forth we will unlock the messaging part completely, this will give you enough characters to write a love poem. After some time free messaging, you will be able to send pictures allowing you to share your interests. After some time if the relationship goes well, a voice-call/video call will unlock allowing both parties to talk. These steps are long but necessary to prevent people from sending dick pics on their first message and harassing others by flooding them with texts.

Third is more efficient matching. As much as we do not want to interfere in the user’s odds of getting matched with the love of their lives, some matches are simply too unrealistic for even the most ambitious of cupids to make. In order to not waste the cupid’s time, we will need to create an algorithm that prevents ships that sank too many times from attempting to float again. If the ship/sink ratio of any specific ship drops too low, cupids will no longer need to evaluate the ship. One consideration we will need to make is the change in status over time. If someone gets a new and better job or picks a new hobby, perhaps the ships they sank should be reevaluated.

Fourth is setting the threshold for ships to be classified as successful. Optimally this will require a numeric quantity of ship votes along with a ship/sink ratio that is reasonable. Data analytic will be effective for setting these requirements.

Fifth is profile enhancement. Stats like ship/sink success ratio and various achievements may look nice on one’s profile.

Sixth is monetization. Love isn’t cheap, neither are our servers. We would like to sway away from ads because they aren’t always appropriate during a romantic chat. Instead, we are thinking about purchasing stickers to send with messages or perhaps virtual gifts people can buy and send to one another. We could also allow cupids to send gifts to what they think are really good ships. Just imagine the fun of getting a couple of movie tickets from cupid (redeemable irl of course).