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  Every open request deserves a quick response!

Intervert

A chat app for students to find study groups, common interest groups, and new friends. All chats are public and can be searched for easily, and new chats pop up at the top of the home page. Be involved, meet new people, and get to know your community!

Motivation

Services like GroupMe and Discord are great, but they don't accommodate the needs of incoming students looking for common interest groups who do not already have connections in the community. To meet new people, you have to already know people, people who are willing to open the gates into their groups. But that one transfer student wanting to study for their first linear algebra exam won't be able to join that group study session if they don't even know that one exists.

Our team wanted to create a service that is based on the idea that finding people who share your interests should be as simple as a keyword search. Finding people with common goals and interests should not have to rely on flyers and word of mouth.

Enter Intervert. Every group created on the app is not only public but also publicized. Whenever a group is created, its name and its tags are all searchable from the front-and-center search bar on the home page, and recent groups are featured right below. It's not only a quick and convenient way to meet new people (literally one search away!)--it's also a great way for existing groups to post events, expand membership, and gain exposure.

Built with

• Node.js and npm
• React - Application frontend
• Chatkit - Chat API using Express JS

Results

Our 36-hour endeavor brought upon a multitude of learning opportunities for front-end technologies. Along the way, our team learned and applied JavaScript, React, and git version control. Much of our team started off on Friday evening with limited knowledge and exposure to the front-end development process. Not only did we have to learn industry technologies, but we had to also learn to apply them, with all their intricacies, in a way that would be to our liking--all within 36 hours. There was, for example, a lot of discussion of whether to integrate a cloud database such as Google Firebase into the app, but after realizing that we had a lot on our plates, we decided to stick to using Chatkit, a third-party chat API.

Project management was new for a lot of us too. While we were all fine with creating a small-scale project for our programming class, we quickly realized it was a whole different ball game when we decided what and how to work on something. We had to analyze our goals and distribute tasks accordingly, and we had to recognize when we needed to go outside for a walk, taking a break from the screen and enjoying the overall HackGT experience.

Among our team's toughest challenges* were the many disputes we had along the way about the exact direction our project should go. Should we allow for some private chats? What kind of moderation should be applied to the app? How would admin privileges work? A lot of the disputes begged the question about what the true purpose of the app would be. Ultimately, through our discussion, we gained a deeper understanding of what we were looking for, and we moved forward in the project through communication and compromise.

_{*The biggest challenge, however, was arguably the scarcity of medium-sized MLH shirts.}

Authors

• Jeffrey Liang
• Rohan Samanta
• Raymond Yu
• Bradon Zhang

♥ HackGT 2019

Built With

• css
• express.js
• html
• javascript
• node.js
• react