Inspiration
Have you ever been skiing, and wondered where your friends went? Maybe they listed a dozen trails that they were going to take to the bottom with names ranging from "Unicorn Sparkles" to "Rambo". Or maybe you took the singles line to the top hoping that you would get there faster only to not see them.
You would they know the pain of sending a "Where R U" text, only to get a response 10 minutes before the lift closes. Gee thanks, but that wasn't that helpful.
What it does
We built the platform that solves this. At the start of the day, create a simple group with your friends, and you'll be able to see each other all day, in real time. No more annoying texts to where people went, all it takes is one simple check to see that they flew down before you even had a chance to get off the chair.
How we built it
We built using Firebase, in order to allow users to easily create their own groups without ever needing to sign in and deal with creating accounts. We wanted a little friction as possible for user to get on, so no needing to release your data to some random group on the internet.
Challenges we ran into
One of the biggest hurdles was dealing with how modern smartphones handle GPS access. Phones aggressively try to conserve battery by limiting or delaying location updates, especially when a browser-based app is running in the background. This meant we often struggled to get consistent, timely GPS data, even when users granted permission.
What's next for Group Ride
While using a website is really easy, moving everything to its own app will one day allow for the best user experience possible. With a custom app, we could fine tune every detail of the user experience to make for a more frictionless experience.
While we currently use cell coverage, we could one day use a native app to allow for GPS communication between devices. This would get rid of issues when individuals aren't able to establish a cellular connection.
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