KumQuat

Website - School page
Application - Main
Website - Homepage
Application - Setting
Application - Reply Section
Application - Reply Section 2
Application - Posting Style
Application - Reporting
Application - Campus Feed
Application - Map Feature

Inspiration

As a team of people who went to small colleges before arriving at Wash U, we know it can be a challenge to get involved and meet new people. This is why we created Kumquat; a social platform to connect students through common interests.

What it does

Kumquat is a communication platform for college students. The app includes two distinct discussion channels: the global channel for everyone at the university, and the dorm channel that is limited to discussion within specific residence halls. These two channels keep the conversations organized.

Kumquat is a place for students to express themselves and exercise their freedom of speech. Therefore, we feature anonymous posting on the app. To prevent cyberbullying, Kumquat includes a feature to report offensive posts.

How we built it

iOS APP: Swift, XCode

Website: We developed a showcase website with HTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript.

Challenges we ran into

Settling down on a topic

Building the databases and connecting the App functionality.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

iOS APP: We were able to finish all the basic functionalities for the application.

Website: We were able to reduce the amount of code for each file in the website by using PHP where we could import the same header and footer to every file without having to write extra code. This allowed us to save time.

What we learned

iOS App: Set up a database and familiarize with coding on Swift.

Web: Practice web design skills using Bootstrap and CSS.

What's next for KumQuat

Machine Learning Algorithm to detect offensive texts/speeches: As the number of users gets higher, cyberbullying becomes an even greater concern. Although we already have the “report” feature to reduce this, developing Natural Language Processing to detect hate speech is crucial to ensure safe communication. Developing this will require significant time and we plan to implement using open source technologies and WashU resources.

Review features for professors, dorms, dining halls, social activities: The future vision for KumQuat is to exceed the idea of “college twitter”. KumQuat’s posting and replying features are an introduction to a whole social media platform for college students. KumQuat could serve as a tool for students to review their professors (like ratemyprofessor.com), dormitories, dining halls, social activities, etc.