PonderPond

Ponder Pond Figma Layout

Inspiration

We were inspired by an older social media platform called YikYak. At first, it was a great platform to connect with your local community. Posts were truly anonymous, and user felt free to speak their minds. A few bad apples abused this anonymity, and caused the original developers to require handles for each user, effecitvely reversing the anonymous nature of the platform. We thought better moderation tools would be a more appropriate response, and so decided to make our own version.

What it does

Currently, this project is more of a concept than a functional prototype. It will be able to connect users within a set distance within a shared chatroom. Each user shall be able to make text posts, and other users will be able to vote these posts up or down. Posts with the highest scores will be displayed first.

How we built it

The UI concepts were made in Figma. We attempted to use Flutter to develop the front-end for a multi-platform application and Firebase to implement the back-end.

Challenges we ran into

Flutter and Firebase proved to be too much for us to tackle in a 24 hour span. Flutter uses a language called Dart, with which none of us had any experience. We lost a lot of time setting up development environments since we did not come into this hack with a plan of what to make.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The UI mockups are good, as is the naming and theme of our concept. Figma has functionality to export these mockups to CSS or other platform specific formats.

What we learned

We've learned that we need to plan and prep before a hack to have any real chance of finishing within the 24 hour time frame. Learning not just one, but two new tools during that time is just not feasible.

What's next for PonderPond

After we take some time to become familiar with our tools, we stand a reasonable chance of turning this concept into something functional. Google Location integration would be necessary to determine which users are nearby as well. In short, we need more time.