Inspiration
Our inspiration for Let's Link stemmed from the common problem a majority of people have: Busy Schedules. Between classes, career fairs, part time jobs, and studying, college schedules are chaotic. Maintaining a stable social life takes way too much effort and time to plan. We wanted to build something that takes the friction out of hanging out.
What it does
Let's Link makes planning stupid easy. Instead of endlessly texting back and forth to find a time that works, Let's Link cross-references you and your friends' Google Calendars to find the exact overlapping windows of free time. Once it finds a time, the app suggests local events, restaurants, and activities tailored to your group. Additionally, you can filter events through budgets to make affordable and accessible plans. Finally, it plots these activities on an interactive map so you can visualize the most convenient events and add them to your calendar.
How we built it
We used Google's AI Studio to cultivate and build our idea from the ground up. We used prompt based coding in order to build and deploy Let's Link. We used the Gemini API to generate ideas for events and then sorted through the output the API gave us to show the user the best fit for their group of friends. We also used it to fetch data from the map and make it interactive.
Challenges we ran into
Our biggest technical hurdle was integrating the Google Calendar API as well as the accessibility restrictions of Google Calendars. Initially, we were unsure of how to securely authenticate users and extract the data from each Google Calendar. We spent a lot of time reading through documentation, debugging OAuth flows, and understanding how to implement the algorithms to compare multiple different schedules at once to find common free gaps.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
An accomplishment we are proud of is that we were able to figure out how to use Google API keys and integrate them into our project. We were able to incorporate almost every idea our group had into Let's Link. We are also proud of the experience the user will have on the interactive side because of our GUI structure
What we learned
We learned how to implement API and utilize it to make more efficient code!
What's next for Let's Link
Group Voting: A feature where the AI suggests 3 activities, and the group can swipe or vote on their favorite.
Venmo Integration: To easily split the bill for whatever restaurant or event the group chooses.
Direct Booking: Integrating APIs like Ticketmaster, Yelp, or OpenTable so users can reserve a table or buy tickets directly through Let's Link.
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