Inspiration
During my freshman year, I signed up to live in Springs. I did not know anything about the dorms, markets, and restaurants and had zero sense of direction before moving in. Due to living at Springs, I ended up being 30 minutes away from my Calculus 2 lectures and discussions, and the nearest place to eat was upwards to a 20 minute walk. I talked to my peers who all seemed to have chosen much more favorable dorms and they all told me that an upperclassmen gave them recommendations. Advice from the wiser was something I wish I had during my preview and dorm selection. The campus was big and it took me almost a year to fully discover everything it has to offer. Up until this semester, I found a new place to eat almost every month.
What it does
To combat the problem of going into UF with zero knowledge regrading its offerings, I built a tool that takes user input. This input consists of dietary restrictions, preferences, location of classes, dorm etc and outputs a list of study places, restaurants and markets that the user will most like. On top of that it will curate an entire routine for the week depending on the your classes. It ensures the restaurant recommendations and study spots are in close proximity to your classes and dorm and logically makes sense in a regular day. There is google calendar integration allowing users to pick which events they want to add on their actual personal calendar.
How I built it
I used Framer and webhooks. Framer allowed me to design a UI that is UF Gator themed and has various interactions, particles and attention to detail. Framer also features breakpoints which makes it very easy to adjust the UI so it it can fit on various aspect ratios, mobile devices, etc. I used the Gemini API as well as Cloudinary to store the images, then send them to Gemini. Furthermore, the database consists of just a txt file containing all dorms, restaurants/markets, gyms and study spots on campus.
Challenges we ran into
I genuinely have never touched Framer in my life before yesterday. I scanned the QR code given to me for a student discount and installed Framer for the first time. I had no idea what was going on and why my changes were being duplicated among different screens. I had no clue you could make scripts on typescript and add interactivity on the site. Something that was insane to me was the potential Framer has with webhooks. Furthermore I had no idea how webhooks worked, and how automation platforms like make.com work. There was definitely a learning curve in those skills as well as the rate limits of the apis running out over and over again.
Accomplishments that I am proud of
I am extremely happy with the overall aesthetic of the site. There are vivid colors, animations and interactivity elevating the site from just boxes. Furthermore I am also very proud that I was able to figure out how to use webhooks as it gave my website a unique functionality.
What we learned
I learned A LOT about Framer and how to implement webhooks. I also learned some type script along the way.
What's next for Not My First Swamp
The next thing I want to do is figure out how to use webhooks to receive data from external APIs. I really wanted to take in the gemini output and print the routine, and recommendations for places around campus on the UI, and then have google calendar buttons, however there were a lot of issues coming up in actually taking in data. Although, I feel the pivot to emailing the output allows the website to be lightweight, and the routine comes in an inbox which is already widely used by people. I do want to attempt at coding this project as it will give me more freedom with what I can do.
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