Huddle

Inspiration

Many campus organizations struggle to gain visibility through one medium alone, resorting to spreading the word via flyers, slack, discord, emails, handing out swag, and more. This process is time-consuming and expensive, with no guarantee of effectiveness. There are also many social events that actively seek to attract a larger crowd but have no means of doing so.

From a user perspective, finding out when and where events on-campus are happening should not require hopping to multiple apps, websites, or texts. This information should be both centralized and organized in a manner that will make sense in your own schedule.

What it does

Huddle is a one-stop shop for discovering student-run events, from parties, to school org meetings, to fundraisers, giveaways, and more!

Want to attend an event? Add it to your calendar! These events will pop-up on an interactive map so you can see the pinpoint of where they are on-campus, a ML-generated efficiency map. Event details will appear on your dashboard.

With the tap of a screen, you can control and organize your social life. Our authentication system enables only students from your school to post and view events, making Huddle personalized, reliable, and convenient on-the-go.

How we built it

@nairfreya: Used react-native frontend skills to develop a timeline screen for the Huddle app. The page displays the title, time, date, and location of user-created events using FlatList and State Hooks for real-time changes.

@euliu: Used Firebase to implement a working home navigator screen with filters and pinpoints. Designed and created the welcome, log-in, and "create new event" pages on react-native, utilizing MapView. Attempted to deploy the app on TestFlight.

@celestion && @jkaus: marketing and ideation for Huddle.

Challenges we ran into

Incorporating Google Auth proved to be a lengthier process than originally estimated; though we still see this as a core component of Huddle, we decided not to include this functionality in the interest of time.
Though we were set to deploy our app onto TestFlight, the upload glitched and could not be resolved within the timeframe of our hackathon. While this was disappointing, we are delighted to have seen our app come to life and can save deployment for the future.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Designing a working prototype that takes in user input, generating a flow of events that they have created themselves
Interactive navigation on the home map screen
Clicking each pinpoint to see event details
Gaining ~30 people on a waitlist for our app, along with feedback

What we learned

There's always an alternative when things go awry :o
Our interview with YC was a nudge towards the innovative appeal of our idea—what sets Huddle apart from similar apps?
- One difference is that ideally, Huddle would map out your day as efficiently as possible based on personal preferences. This service will provide a map around campus with the most efficient route to basically autopilot your day.
- Another significant difference is that apps like these have not been designed to be school-specific. Currently, there is no single app that exists across multiple schools and their student populations to enhance social event visibility, scheduling, or route optimization. Huddle provides a powerfully new level of convenience, in only a couple taps.

What's next for Huddle

use an ML to chart an 'optimized route' between your selected events
stories / post library for each event location
- tags
'suggested for you' tab based on interests
creating private vs. public events
as suggested by user feedback, add a “connect with friends” feature, to see what they plan to attend!
- can use Twilio to implement a related notification system
monetization
gamification of the app (i.e. a point system for attending certain events, and a leaderboard among friends)