KeepInTouch

homepage
google contacts
activity generator

Inspiration

The pandemic has stripped down the ways we approach work and play to its necessities. Shifting online means every interaction is efficiently scheduled and planned - but how much are we missing out by leading predictable lives?

KeepInTouch seeks to push users out of their social comfort zone and help people reconnect over trying new activities. We hope to challenge the notion that lockdown is boring and that it is possible to create shared memories despite being remote.

What it does

KeepInTouch suggests random do-it-together activities with friends from your Google Contacts list to remind you of who you may have lost touch with over lockdown.

How we built it

KeepInTouch is a web app built using React, JavaScript, blood, sweat and tears.

Challenges we ran into

Integrating with Google APIs was a huge struggle, particularly scoping requests and getting the right permissions to obtain sensitive data.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Being able to get external APIs to work with our app is pretty cool.

What we learned

Debugging on API calls requires extra thought and reference to documentation/logged issues. It may also be best to ask for help from someone more experienced...

The team has also picked up React, which is particularly useful especially as we didn't have much web development experience at all prior to this.

What's next for KeepInTouch

With time and expertise, we would allow Facebook logins, where users can then upload photos of the shared activity (eg. cakes they have baked, or instruments they have picked up together).

We would also add reminders on KeepInTouch where users can register as friends, and if it's been too long since they caught up the app would send both of them a reminder to hopefully spark conversation!

As well as integrating with Google Contacts, another next step would be to access the user's calendar to directly add the events suggested by the app.