HackMeet

App

Inspiration

You're a hacker at a virtual Hackathon. You dig through hundreds of messages on Slack, hoping to find potential partners (who aren't taken already!). Or you post your bio in numerous Slack channels, wishing that your post doesn't drown among hundreds of others and that someone notices you. Hopping around video chats to introduce yourself and meet other hackers is nice, but there might be someone whom you didn't get the chance to meet, someone who could have been your perfect partner!

The scenario above is such a common struggle among us, and our team hopes to solve this problem using the connectivity app HackMeet.

What it does

In hackathons, HackMeet allows hackers to interact with others' profiles and project ideas in an intuitive way to facilitate team formation. After creating an account and entering their info, users can view the profiles of other hackers. If they are searching for a team and see a profile with a cool idea and open group availability, they can direct message them and ask to form a team! Our filter feature allows users to view hackers with specific interests, skills, availability, etc. For hackers who are searching for additional members with specific skill sets, they can use the filter to view and reach out to those who might be a great fit for their team!

How we built it

We first thought about design and project scope focusing on what key features we should include in our app. We brainstormed what were the best ways that hackers would be able to connect with each other and find the right groups.
At first, we tried building a website with React as the front end and Firebase as the backend. None of us had much experience User Authentication was done with firebase. All the database is created with firebase's NoSQL database. We were running into many problems and progress was very slow, as most of our time was spent trying to learn how to do things. Midway through- we decided to switch over to creating an app with android studio to create a finished product.

Challenges we ran into

The most difficult part of our project was trying to learn from the tutorials and taking bits and pieces to integrate them into our project. We really thought it was possible for us to learn web development within a limited time but it turned out that it was more difficult than we estimated. But I think it was a good decision that we switched it over to App development at the end. Some of us had at least some familiarity with it so we were able to get the job done.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first hackathon and we are proud to have an MVP and something to showcase. It was very difficult for us to pull it through since we were completely new to web dev and we were trying to understand as much as possible within those hours. In the end, we were able to cover most of the MVP using Android Studio.

What we learned

Among many things: How to use Figma to create wireframes,
Learned the basics of React web development, user firebase as a backend and database, and android

What's next for HackMeet

There is a whole lot we can expand on our app due to our limited time and knowledge going into this hackathon. We can definitely expand on the idea and create a matching algorithm so we can better refine the user experience. Refining the UI/UX. Create a website for the HackMeet platform.