Inspiration
Due to the state of college life during COVID, it can be really hard to connect with people and find a club that’s just right for you. We wanted to make the process of finding and joining a club as easy as possible, in order to increase students’ connection with each other.
What it does
Our website takes information provided by the user and returns suggestions on which club the user should join based on their preferences. It displays the available clubs in three categories: clubs that the user would love, clubs that they may like, and clubs that they probably wouldn’t like.
How we built it
We used JavaScript for the backend to handle the logic, the user interface, and to score the users’ input. We then implemented HTML and CSS for the front end of the site. Additionally, we hosted our website with GitHub pages.
Challenges we ran into
The main challenge we faced was implementing the website’s user input feature. We tried a number of systems and had some disconnect with the front end/back end until we finally settled on a system that worked. Also, we had to spend some time perfecting the recording of input, both the math we would use and actually implementing it.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We’re proud that our site offers thoughtful recommendations. A lot of work went into devising reasonable questions and establishing a logical category and point value system. We drew inspiration from other personality tests, such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the Big Five personality test.
What we learned
This was the first time most of our teammates have participated in a hackathon or collaborated on a JavaScript-heavy website. We worked with unfamiliar languages, such as JavaScript, and with less familiar dev tools, such as GitHub. We were able to fill in each other’s blind spots and share information in a way that everyone benefited from.
What's next for Find a Club
In the future, we hope to improve Find A Club by expanding it to all of WPI’s clubs. We also hope to expand the current questions and change our point rankings per question to improve our recommendations’ accuracy. Additionally, we plan to gather clubs’ Google/Outlook Calendar events and filter the calendars’ results to show upcoming events from clubs that the user will love. Finally, we hope to reach out to WPI students to get their feedback on the questions and their club recommendations.
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.