REViews - of the aggies, by the aggies, for the aggies

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  Main page

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  Classes page

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  Submit review page

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  Sign in page

Inspiration

We are inspired to connect Aggies through the power of technology. We would imagine a platform where Aggies can come together to discuss various parts of the university experience. This will lead to an enhanced experience for students, professors, and campus organizations.

What it does

REViews has three main facets. The organizations tab has three subsections, which allow students to find orgs that are either social, professional, or major specific. The classes tab contains reviews from current and former students on specific classes, study tips from individuals who have taken the class, and comments on the applicability of classes in future classes or jobs. Lastly, the professors tab holds student reviews on professors, descriptions of the teaching styles of different professors, and red flags that students should be aware of.

The information on all these topics comes in the form of posts from verified Aggies. Individuals will log in, and can reach a post submission form with the click of a button. This allows students to recount their personal experiences, and provide helpful insight and feedback to other students.

How we built it

The application is hosted on AWS Amplify which is a serverless hosting solution. It allows for fast iteration on the backend and frontend through a complete CI/CD process. We also used serverless databases for the store and a GraphQL API.

Challenges we ran into

We were all pretty new to Figma and the learning curve was pretty steep. However, we persevered and flushed out a decent UI. Additionally, it was many of our team member's first time using JavaScript frameworks which we also had to learn through online tutorials and documentation.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Within the allotted time, we were able to design the website and fully implement one subdivision of the website. A user can login to the website and view posts made by others. They can also submit their own posts relating to classes, as of now. The posts reflect who made it and it's title and content.

What we learned

We used multiple technologies to accomplish this. Figma was used for the front end design. AWS Amplify Studio was used to generate code using our models from Figma. Lastly, Next.js was used as the front end framework of the website. For the backend, we deployed a GraphQL API on AWS AppSync backed by Amazon DynamoDB. For user authentication, we used Amazon Cognito, which is a fully managed and scalable service for thousands of users.

What's next for REViews - of the aggies, by the aggies, for the aggies

Next, we plan to implement the Organizations and Professors page. Also, we need to add functionality for accommodating multiple types of users. For example, we could envision organizations posting announcements on a forum on their dedicated page.

Built With

• amazon-dynamodb
• amplify
• graphql
• nextjs