Relay.me

Inspiration

As Technolgap members, a community for women-in-tech, we were inspired to try our best to close the gender gap in tech. Naturally, you might recommend someone you know and endorse personally and can use LinkedIn to do so. But we thought there must be an easy and accessible way to accomplish this. Thus Relay.Me was born!

What it does

It lets you get matched to 3 other candidates who have similar qualifications and provides an embeddable link to add to your website or portfolio. The goal is to improve the representation of underrepresented groups and let people gain access to more opportunities.

How we built it

All of us were new to building extensions in chrome and learnt how to leverage our web development skills. We initially designed the extension in Figma and tested out the feasibility of features in the prototype. Then, we used good-old HTML5 and CSS3 for the heavy lifting of the front end. For the backend, we developed JavaScript functions and added interactivity to the app.

Challenges we ran into

We initially wanted to set up a database of users and found an alternative called Airtable, which had its API. We could not make it work seamlessly with the time constraints, so we decided to demo a mock interface.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of building and deploying a functioning Chrome extension. Furthermore, 75% of the team were beginners, so we learnt a lot about the software development cycle and the feasibility of features.

What we learned

We learnt how to build and deploy a chrome extension. We also learnt how to use APIs and create functions to manipulate databases in Airtable. Lastly, we learnt how to communicate well and keep each other in the loop throughout the hacking period.

What's next for Relay.me

In the future, we'd like to implement the Airtable backend and publish our extension onto the Chrome Developer store. We'd also like to include customization of the embeddable link and additional social media customizations.