Quarantine Buddies

Home screen
LoginRegister Screen
What I have/What I need screen
My Matches Screen
Chat Screen
Firestore database

Inspiration

We were inspired to build this project because we know that COVID mobile apps are in high demand right now. We know that many are struggling with food insecurity, and lack of essential items in their households, and lots of people, especially those of older demographics and pre-existing high condition have high risk of complications associated with COVID. So we decided to build an app that promotes social distancing through a 'I have/I need' system.

What it does

We created an iOS application called Quarantine Buddies that allows users to specify what essential items they lack and what essential items they have an abundance of. The application then matches users with others based on geolocation data. Matched users can chat with each other on the app to coordinate contactless pickup and dropoff, thereby lowering the risk of COVID-19 exposure.

How I built it

We used the language Swift to build the app. We also used Google's Firebase and Firestore for user login/registration, and authentication, as well as to store user data.

Challenges I ran into

This was our team's first/second time using swift, so some syntax we were still unfamiliar with. Dealing with Firebase/Firestore was a pretty big challenge. It was difficult to access the database and get each users' location and what items they want and need.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm really proud that we were able to overcome the Firebase challenge. That took up the bulk of our time. I'm also pretty proud of the slick UI, and how users can easily transition between screens.

What I learned

I learned how to use Firebase to store user info. I also got more familiar with the syntax of Swift (as this was my second time using it). I learned how to pass variables between files.

What's next for Quarantine-buddies

Our next goals are to enhance the UI of the app. We will give the option for users to "search" for items instead of having a finite number of essential items to give and receive. In addition, we are going to link the chat function to Firestore so that each user can create official profiles, and their chat history can be easily accessed and saved. Also, possibly use AndroidStudio to code the Android version!

Built With

firebase
firestore
ruby
swift

Submitted to

HopHacks Fall 2020
- Winner Best Use of Google Cloud - COVID-19 Hackathon Fund

Created by

I worked on the back-end and the frontend. I worked on trying to access all the users' wants and needs, as well as some login/register authentication. Frontend-wise I made sure all the buttons linked to the right screens, and some of the UI. I also worked on the powerpoint presentation and putting together the ppt.

Jamie Huang
Prior to implementation, I worked on project design, determining the app's functionality and accessibility for our target audience. I focused on back-end development, linking our app to Google's Firebase and Firestore to store the user's needs, as well as using Firebase Authentication to enable users to register and login to the app, providing security and privacy for user information. I also devised our app's heuristic for pairing the user's haves/needs with other users' haves/needs, and encoded it into the app.

Anish Kulkarni
Sophomore at Johns Hopkins University studying Computational Biology and Economics.
Pearl Franz
Peiyuan Xu
Johns Hopkins University