Neighborhood Nexus

Inspiration

Many returned missionaries say that they wish they had an app like Area Book. This is something all the RMs here agree with, and we all have heard it from many of our friends.

We were inspired by apps like Area Book, and wanted to see if there was some way to bring that to other audiences, combined with aspects of a social media app. We wanted to connect people through mapmaking and event planning.

What it does

This app allows people to share events they are planning or going to, through a main interface of a map. It can be helpful in building unity among communities. It also gives people a chat feature for each event they are attending, so planning ride shares and other aspects are much easier.

How we built it

Our initial plan was to make an Android native app with Kotlin. However, about three hours before the hackathon, we decided to take things in a different direction, and we all learned Flutter+Dart, something none of us had even really used before. Our MVP was still an Android app, however.

Challenges we ran into

• Learning a new programming language
• Connecting firebase
• Database interaction errors (self-DDoS)
• Interacting with Flutter’s Google Maps API
• Connecting data between app states

Accomplishments that we're proud of

• We got it all to work!
• The app overall feels professional, though minimal
• We came across many obstacles that seemed insurmountable, but we overcame them all

What we learned

• New language (Dart)
• New UI Toolkit (Flutter)
• Firebase/Firestore
• Authentication
• Git workflow (branches)

Working Product

• https://github.com/pgattic/neighbor_nexus/releases

Customers

This app is highly monetizable, in the same way that certain marketplaces, ride-share services, and event planning services are. Things like in-app promotions and enterprise solutions could be highly sought after.

Built With

• dart
• flutter