OutLink

We're submitting for the Adventure Vertical at table #37!

Inspiration

In 2024, Forbes conducted a study showing that 36% of Americans report feelings of loneliness, with their mental health in disrepair. We were inspired by asking ourselves the question, how can we make Americans less lonely? Our solution was the outdoors. In a study by UC Davis, being outside has shown to improve mental health. Our idea was to combine bringing people outside with creating lasting social connections.

What It Does

We use Google APIs to create a list of parks, hikes, and trails in a user's vicinity, requiring only their zip code. By scheduling events at these locations, we can set up times to send multiple users to them. Our users act as adventurers, being able to complete tasks after checking in to their events. Typically, these tasks are social, such as introducing yourself to a person.

How We Built It

We built our app using the MERN stack (MongoDB, Express, React, and Node), using React Native for app development. On the backend, we used the Google Places and Google Geocode APIs to take a person’s zip code and match them with trails, hikes, and parks in their areas. Using React, we gave users the ability to RSVP and check in to events.

Challenges We Ran Into

In the front end we struggled to learn React Native in the first place to design our user experience and learn how to communicate with a backend database. On the backend, we struggled finding an api with trails and parks, going through four APIs before finding one that would let us search for parks based on location.

Accomplishments We're Proud of

In the end, we’re proud of coming up with a working demo of our app, even though it felt like a monumental task when we began!

What We Learned

We learned how to run logic on the backend as well as learning how to create mobile apps in React.

What's Next For OutLink

Though we worked primarily on expanding the land based events, we want to take into more consideration user preferences going forwards. We also want to increase the over-the-water activities section and better expand on the socialization aspect of the app.