Inspiration
I do not have a very strong technical background, so I thought that coming here and building something alone would be a large hurdle that I'd love to climb over. I wanted to build something that I knew I would not finish by the end of the weekend, just so that I would push myself to improve it at all times. This is where I drew my inspiration for FoundIt, a social media relationship management that is very simple in the front, and complicated in the back. The simple design made it easy to visualize and play around with, however, the complicated functionality set a few exciting barriers in my way.
What it does
FoundIt aims to improve connecting with others and help people track their relationships. It is centred around a user-friendly design, which allows you to create a QR code that will connect you on social media with whoever scans it. The QR code will combine the functionality of multiple accounts (like Snapchat, Facebook, or others) and use phone functionalities to allow one to send and accept a request between two parties.
How I built it
As I am a 1 person team I decided to quickly skip the front-end and create a mockup for the app using Mockit. I find that visualizing what you're working on will help set up future work and help inspire one to work on it. The functionality was initially developed using Python, and then I switched to JS, and then I tried to integrate StdLib into it, and then I went back to Python.
Challenges I ran into
Everything to do with the QR code. I couldn't seem to combine the functionality of the different social media into 1 cohesive action for the QR code to run. I tried to set up a website that would have like 5 add friend links and then scrap the website for the links and virtually click them. I tried to open up individual profiles and add people 1 by 1. Nothing worked. The functionality of the app is still very shaky
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
Creating a functional mockup of the app, I've never done that as I'm usually focussed on the backend. Also the idea, I really like the idea and it seems like a great app in general.
What I learned
Don't get caught up on mistakes. Don't be afraid to pivot even if you're invested into a specific idea (QR codes)
What's next for FoundIt
Integrate functionality over the Christmas break and hopefully bring it to a campus to demo it with students!
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