Inspiration
Our team was inspired by our love for doing research at LMU. But, we found that it was more difficult to find an open research project than it was to join one! We determined that the best way to bridge this issue was to build a communal iOS application where students can search for projects and professors can post about the work they are doing.
What it does
Users are able to search for all projects, view project details of specific research projects, as well as efficiently view corresponding majors that the project would be ideal for. Details of the project page include a brief description, the current team members on the team, ideal characteristics listed by the professor, and an apply button for users to easily request to join.
How we built it
Our team build the mobile application using XCode, SwiftUI, and Figma.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges we had were UI issues with padding and formatting and fetching the data with Firebase.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are most proud of our simplistic design that is accessible for users to view and search for projects. We are also proud of being able to integrate Firebase as our database to connect with our application.
What we learned
We learned how to model complex structures in Firebase Firestore in a non-relational database format, we learned how to implement a multi-step authentication and sign-up process with emphasis on a smooth user experience, and we focused on creating a pleasing user interface that smoothly integrates frontend views with backend calls to fetch data from Firebase.
What's next for investiGATE
We would like to add a dashboard for professors to view all applicants and their applications for easy management. We would also like to add an application progress page for students to view all of the projects that they have already applied to or have heard back from with acceptances/rejections.
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