Juncture

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  The Team

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  Profile Prototype

Inspiration

As four UCLA students who are super involved in non-academic activities affiliated with UCLA, we’ve all faced the problem of “I didn’t know that existed!” Kennedy and David are part of the UCLA ACM Studio, which creates video games, Cory is part of the UCLA Chinese Music Ensemble, and Rachel is part of the UCLA Club Wushu Team. Many of us joined these organizations later than we would have liked, largely because of how difficult it was to locate these clubs. By building an application that connects students to clubs, students can head out, leave their dorms, and touch grass!

What it does

Juncture is an application that connects students to clubs by creating an interactive “dating app” experience for school clubs and organizations. On the main screen, students are shown a club and are able to click “I’m interested!” which adds the club to a list of organizations attached to the user’s profile or they are able to click “Maybe next time!” which puts the club aside. Additionally, users are able to easily find club contact information, including email and social media accounts.

How we built it

We started off by creating a Next.js application, using Django for backend and Tailwind to help in the frontend. First, we tackled scraping the UCLA club directory and storing the club information in the database. We simultaneously began ideating the UI and theming of our app and building basic Next.js components that we could later expand.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating the backend to the frontend presented a multitude of challenges, including difficulties with setting configurations and authentication problems. It was also difficult to set up the database in a way that facilitated our API endpoints well, especially since it was the first time we had done such a setup.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud of our ability to create a fully functioning full stack web application, with many features like a dynamic database and user authentication. We greatly improved upon our frontend UI, and our designers and programmers put in great work to make the app as polished as possible. The backend was also the first time we had set up a custom database, and considering that this was the first or second hackathon we had ever attended, we are very proud of every feature we implemented.

What we learned

We learned that when potential solutions to a problem reach a standstill, sometimes it is more effective to start over or pass on the task to a teammate. We learned more about project organization, task prioritization, and the importance of differentiating between baseline and stretch goals.

What's next for Juncture

In the near future, we want to find a way to deploy the site, hosting the database and allowing the UCLA community to take advantage of what we have created. For future plans, we would also love to bring this application to other campuses, including high schools, so that students of all ages can partake in the club search to help them find their life’s passions.

Built With

• django
• javascript
• nextjs
• python
• react
• tailwind
• typescript