InterBuddies

Finding buddies
Creating profile
Homepage
Events map

Inspiration

Interbuddies began with a personal experience: arriving at the University of British Columbia as an international student and struggling to find others with the same nationality. In an unfamiliar place, meeting someone who speaks your language or shares your background can boost people's sense of belonging in their new environment. We wanted to make those connections easy to find. That idea grew beyond nationality. Someone might be looking for a tennis partner in their residence, a friend in the same major, or a fellow first-year student. We built Interbuddies around a simple belief: finding common ground can make starting a conversation feel a lot less intimidating.

What it does

Interbuddies helps students at UBC discover people they have a lot in common with. Students create a profile with details such as their nationality, languages, major, year of study, residence, hobbies, and sports. These details help them find people they would like to get to know, whether that means another Portuguese speaker or someone nearby who also enjoys tennis. Students can also post events at specific locations on campus, creating more opportunities to meet in person. Profiles include social media links, so once someone finds a potential friend, they can reach out through those platforms. Interbuddies acts as a social bridge, helping students discover common ground and take the first step toward getting to know each other.

How we built it

Frontend

React + Vite (framework)
Tailwind CSS (formating)
Leaflet (UBC map) Backend
Express (framework)
Sqlite (database)
crypto (encrypting users’ data)
cors (cross-Origin Resource Sharing)

Challenges we ran into

Throughout the project, we ran into merge conflicts when pulling the latest version with git pull. This occurred when two or more people made changes to the same file, preventing git from being able to merge the versions automatically. We each learned to resolve the conflicts and preserve the most recent version by using the source control panel in VS Code. One of the causes of this arose from lack of organization. Our front-end engineers also made changes to the backend when working with Codex, causing a lot of unnecessary conflicts. We also did not have effective communication with one another, as most of us were not very sure what was going on and how we were going to approach our tasks. However, we slowly learned the process and how each piece of work interconnected with one another, and began to make tangible progress.

Accomplishments we are proud of

We are proud of turning a personal struggle into a tool that could help other students build connections. What started as a way to find people of the same nationality became a broader way to discover shared interests, activities, and experiences within a university community. As we developed the project, we added details we had not initially considered, such as major and residence, that can make a real difference in student life. We also expanded the idea to include campus events. Each addition helped us bring the project closer to something we would want to use ourselves.

What we learned

We learned how much a simple idea can grow through teamwork. Each of us brought different perspectives and suggestions, helping us question our assumptions and recognize possibilities we had missed. Some features we initially considered essential became less central, while details we had overlooked became important parts of the experience. Above all, we learned that teamwork is essential to turning an individual idea into something that serves a wider community. Listening to one another helped us look beyond our own experiences and build a project that better reflects the needs of the students we hope to help.

What's next for Interbuddies

Interbuddies currently focuses solely on the University of British Columbia. Our next step is to collect feedback from our student users, refine the experience based on those feedback, and eventually expand to other universities. We hope to work with different university communities to help more students discover the people around them. We know exactly what it feels like to want these connections and struggle to find them. We want Interbuddies to make that first step easier, whether it leads to a tennis match, a conversation in your first language, or a friendship that lasts for life.