COVID Connections

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Inspiration

In the middle of a quarantine it’s impossible to avoid needing to do things in person, to go out, to shop, and work. We wanted to make something that helps keep us and the people we cared about COVID-safe!

What it does

COVID Connections keeps track of your 'circle' - a list of people you interact with regularly and semi-regularly. When one of those users updates their status, you're then updated on their COVID status, for example, if they've recently gone into self-isolation. This allows you to be aware of who's at risk in your social group.

Furthermore, COVID Connections is a platform of giving. During these hard times, we need each other more than ever; users are notified when others are in need, and can volunteer to help others with anything from grocery shopping to snow shoveling.

How we built it

The app was built in React Native for maximum compatibility, with the database built in MongoDB. The server utilizes Node.js and Express.js, handling user authentication using JWT bearer authentication with Passport.js.

Challenges we ran into

With a remote project comes remote challenges, and package problems were our most persistent. With some things seemingly randomly uninstalling themselves, or requiring modifications to obscure directories, or just plain old not working when they really should be, ensuring our packages worked as intended was a difficult part of the project. Additionally, we encountered numerous issues with internal navigation, and thanks to the help of some mentors, were able to sort out the stack after a few hours of puzzling. A big shoutout to the mentors for being such a help!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Going from an idea to an almost fully functional app was extremely challenging and took a lot of effort, but we think that our final product is a standout slice of software engineering! Getting authentication to work was extremely tough, but we eventually pulled through and got it working!

What we learned

As a group, we all learned many invaluable skills such as UI design principles, system architecture and integration, software development cycles, cybersecurity and authentication, and data/database modelling.