InsightMap

Inspiration

We’ve all spent way too much time scrolling through Google Maps or Yelp, trying to find the right place to go. We thought, what if we could just set our preferences once, and let an app figure out the rest? That’s where InsightMap came from: a smarter way to find places without the endless search.

What it does

InsightMap helps you quickly find nearby spots like restaurants, hotels, or services based on what you care about distance, ratings, price, and category. You enter your filters, and it shows a matching result with all the details you’d want: name, address, stars, category, and price range. No guesswork, no scrolling.

How we built it

We used PySide6 to build the desktop interface and styled everything to look modern and clean. We added features like custom star ratings, synced price filters, scrollable forms, and a result panel that updates when you hit "Search." It’s all built in Python and ready to connect to real data when needed.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the UI to feel smooth and not clunky took a lot of tweaking. Making the price range system smart (so users couldn’t set the min higher than the max) was trickier than expected. Styling scrollbars in PySide6? That was a whole journey in itself.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The UI looks great and actually feels good to use

Sliders, dropdowns, and ratings all sync and work smoothly

It’s clean, reliable, and built in a way that can scale up later

It really does automate the search process and fast

What we learned

We got way better at building smart UIs with PySide6, and learned how to think through UX problems from the user's point of view. We also got more comfortable managing logic behind sliders, filters, and layout behaviors.

What's next for InsightMap

We want to connect it to the real Google Maps and Places API to fetch live results. We'd also love to add a live map view, let users browse multiple results, and maybe even turn this into a full travel assistant that learns your preferences over time.