FoundU

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FoundU GIF
FoundU login page
FoundU Home page
FoundU Profile page

Inspiration

We were inspired by the real-world frustrations students experience when they lose their personal belongings on campus. We knew of students who had lost items and understood how stressful and inconvenient it can be to try to get them back. These causes motivated us to create FoundU, a solution designed to make finding lost belongings easier and bring our campus community together.

What it does

FoundU is a campus-based lost-and-found app designed to help students retrieve their lost belongings. Whether a student lost their headphones, book bag, water bottle, our app makes it easier to search for, report, and recover missing items. By bringing the campus community together, we aim to make finding lost belongings simple, convenient, and stress-free.

How we built it

We built FoundU using Visual Studio Code (VS Code) for writing and editing our code and GitHub for version control and team collaboration, allowing us to share and pull each other's code as we worked together. We used Supabase Cloud for our backend services, including database management with PostgreSQL, cloud storage for item images, and authentication to support user accounts. We also used Figma to design and plan the app's user interface and user experience, with React Native and Expo as our mobile app development framework and platform. By combining these tools, we aimed to create a convenient, user-friendly campus lost-and-found app that helps students reconnect with their missing belongings.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was learning how to use different development tools and get them working together as a team. We used VS Code to write our code, GitHub to share and pull each other's work, and Supabase for our backend needs. Learning how repositories and branches work while collaborating on the same project took time, especially as we became familiar with the development process. Another major challenge was the limited time we had to complete the project. Within this short timeframe, we had to learn new tools, coordinate our efforts, troubleshoot problems, and work together to bring our idea for FoundU to life. This experience pushed us to adapt quickly, communicate effectively, and make the most of the time we had.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of taking a real-world problem that students experience and turning it into an idea for a solution through FoundU. As a team, we stepped outside our comfort zones to explore new tools, collaborate on code, and bring our design ideas to life. We are especially proud of learning to use GitHub for sharing our work and coordinating our development process while exploring how VS Code, Supabase, and our frontend technologies fit together. Most importantly, we are proud of working together to create something intended to make campus life a little easier for other students.

What we learned

Throughout this project, we learned more about the different stages of app development, from designing an interface in Figma to writing code in VS Code and collaborating through GitHub. We gained a better understanding of how a backend service like Supabase can support a mobile application through database management, cloud storage, and authentication. We also learned that building an app requires more than just having a good idea; it takes teamwork, communication, problem-solving, and a willingness to learn unfamiliar technologies. This experience helped us better understand how individual tools and team contributions come together to develop an application

What's next for FoundU

Our next steps are to continue developing FoundU's core features and make finding lost belongings even easier for students. We hope to incorporate image recognition technology inspired by Google Lens, allowing students to scan or upload pictures of items and find potential matches among existing lost-and-found reports. We also plan to connect our app to Supabase to support item listings, image storage, and real-time updates. As we continue improving FoundU, we want to prioritize a user-friendly experience, help students reconnect with their belongings faster, and create a more connected and supportive campus community.