Inspiration
We recognized that people around our age, high schoolers and college students, struggle with building deep connections, whether it's because they don't have time to keep up with their friends or it's been more difficult to form relationships since the pandemic. After recognizing the impact BeReal had by connecting people daily through photos, we wanted to create a more meaningful platform that brings people together.
What it does
OpenUp has daily questions that are the same for everyone using the app to answer, from asking about their favorite comfort food to asking about their life goals. After people share their responses, the rest of the features unlock so that they are able to read what their friends have said. There's a maximum of one heart a day to add value to the like for the response they loved most. Favorited people will be able to see their responses at the top.
How we built it
We used Express, MongoDB, Joi, and JavaScript for the backend, which includes the setup for the application environment. For the frontend, we used React Native, JavaScript, React Navigation, and Expo Go to adjust the user interface for a mobile application.
Challenges we ran into
With the network request between the backend and the frontend, the WiFi cut out. The firewall blocked the local development server, so we switched to a hotspot. We were initially very ambitious with our application, but we learned how to prioritize the important functionalities under a time crunch; our ideas for extra features have been tabled for future potential updates.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of the extensive process we dedicated to developing an application idea that we genuinely believe could be used by people bring us all closer together. We would like to thank our mentor who suggested the "yes and" strategy after seeing us think of and eliminate multiple ideas. Our team is also excited to have worked together to the end to complete the first version of OpenUp under the time restrictions.
What's next for OpenUp
Questionnaire for demographics Public/private options to connect globally Explore page for other opinions Surveys to understand what questions people prefer Button select for “friends”, “local”, and “global viewing
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