IRL✨ | Devpost

IRL app

Inspiration

We were inspired by our own experiences and by those of our classmates. Despite having started our degree in-person, before the pandemic, most of our time in college has been spent online. We know people who started post-secondary studies during the pandemic and some of them have never even been to campus.

We noted that when pandemic recovery plans are discussed, economic recovery seems to be the focus. And while it is quite important, restoring the social lives and mental health of people is also crucial to building a better world after this situation. Our concept is designed to facilitate both, social and economic restoration.

What it does

We created the concept prototype for an app that helps students, specially those who have done school online for the last two years, make real-life connections with their classmates and people around them.

During the onboarding process, users are asked about their interests along with some personal information, like what school they go to and what program/major they are taking.

Because we understand that safety and boundaries are important, users are asked covid safety related questions as well. Things like vaccination status, how many people they would feel comfortable meeting with at a time, and what kind of settings they would feel safe in (restaurants, parks, malls, etc.), are all imputed by the user.

Using the information provided, users are matched with a group of people or with a person, whom with the app has determined they are compatible with. Users are then prompted to start a chat or group chat.

After the app detects a certain number of messages has been exchanged, the app will suggest meeting up to the users. The app, based on the users interests, will suggest a small local venue where they should hang out.

How we built it

We used Figma for the whole process, from brainstorming to user flows and wireframes. Our final prototype can be viewed in Figma,

Challenges we ran into

When we were brainstorming we found it difficult to find an idea that would help people's mental health recover along with the economy. After we came up with our concept we found ourselves having to narrow down or scope. We had to curate the user flow that we showed in our video to display the core idea of our project.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We managed to find a way to effectively display our project within the required timeframe. We overcame feature creep and made sure that we only included what was essential for our project. We created a fun and effective visual identity for our project