My Outlet

Some days we're charged up, other days we feel drained! My Outlet makes it easy to let others near your know you're ready to talk through an intuitive social battery.

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Inspiration

We took inspiration for the Outlet app from a meme of a guy with a paper on his back that said not to disturb him. We admired how the guy was able to describe his social situation without having to move a muscle.

What it does

Some days we feel like talking, other days we don't, and through the Outlet's social battery feature, you can tell other people around you whether you're looking to strike to them. The social battery is a UI you can toggle to 5 different levels, from very sociable to do not disturb, that lets others know your current status. Keeping proximity and convenience in mind, we only share user information to people who are nearby.

How we built it

We built the entire frontend using React, which is a JS library for building UI. On the backend, we built our API through Django, a Python web framework. We implemented our data storage through a No-SQL database called MongoDB, and we used Azure cloud for flexible, scalable querying. Finally, we collaborated and maintain the repository through GitHub.

Challenges we ran into

We had some issues with implementing the databases, from bad logic in code to incorrect query statements. Additionally, we had issues running the frontend application and backend application at once, as we faced many network and security related issues (e.g; CORS).

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We made a fully functional frontend application. We successfully made use of Azure cloud's database services, manipulating it through our complete REST API. We spent a lot of time on its design and overcame many technical obstacles along the way.

What we learned

We learned how to manipulate databases through a python MongoDB driver, and we developed both the backend and frontend without any sort of boilerplate code - from scratch. We made use of Figma to perfect CSS designs before implementing it in React. We devised API designs that were to-the-point, with JSON compatibility.

What's next for My Outlet

Hopefully, we can scale our app to a larger userbase, with more information on the location of potential buddies and more customization options for Outlet users.

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