Crowded

Inspiration

During the pandemic, there is a significant increase in the use of online social platforms such as Zoom, Teams, and Clubhouse. However, those conferencing options cannot provide a communication experience that is close to real-life experience. For example, in a zoom call, only one person can talk, while at a party you often alternate between different conversations, making the experience more fluid and natural.

What it does

Crowded is an online social platform with an advanced user interface that allows more realistic communication experiences. The user can join conversations that are happening in real-time, or start a new conversation with others, and can jump from conversation to conversation while maintaining a natural audio experience. The volume of the output audio is based on the position of the user and how close he/she is to other people, and so that we can enable the simultaneous occurrence of conversations. That way, it is more comfortable for people who might be nervous to be the only one talking in front of everyone in the room.

How we built it

We used Figma to built the prototype, and we plan on using React and Javascript to build the actual web.

Challenges we ran into

We were not totally familiar with frontend development and the process of developing a working web. Although we tried to learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript during the competition, we were still not able to deliver the final product.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of our idea because the use of online social platforms has been on an incline, but not everyone likes the rigit conversation environment, as there can only be one person talking at a time. Improving the user interface will help people to get back to real-time conversations more easily while stay safe in the pandemic.

What we learned

Although we might not be as skilled as other teams, we tried our best and we think that our idea could be a potential solution to the current situation a lot of people are facing in the online social environment.