Set Match

Inspiration

It's hard to get motivated to become more fit and healthy. A workout buddy is a great help towards any fitness goal. Finding a good workout buddy is easier said than done especially if your friends don't like working out. What Set Match does is match you up with a workout buddy of similar workout interests for you to share your fitness with.

What it does

Set Match is a social fitness android platform that enables users to match with other users with similar fitness routines to workout together. After filling out your profile, you will get recommendations for potential workout buddies. When you find one you like, you can check them to propose a switching of emails. If they also check you, you will receive an email with the other's contact information. This streamlines the contact information exchange process allows you to meet new people that share your interests.

How we built it

Set Match was made using Android Studio for the front end app design and node.js, mongodb, and express for the back end. We used the built in android libraries to do the UI design and posting. For the web server, we used our Digital Ocean VPS.

Challenges we ran into

This was our first time making an Android app, and because of how unintuitive Android Studio was, it took us a very long time to even get our project set up for collaboration on git. We also had to learn the Android libraries, which are at least as unintuitive as the project set up itself.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Because of all the trouble we ran into during set up, every successful build was a cause for celebration. However, we are most proud of our match feature. It required a robust front and back end to be able to process the information we wanted to. The interaction between our front end Android Studio and the node.js demonstrates our ability to integrate many diverse technologies into one cohesive whole.

What we learned

Firstly, we learned a lot about android app development. Android studio and Android libraries are very complex and took much time to read through and understand the documentation. It took a while to learn about asynchronous tasks, xml, intent, json procesing in java, etc just to be able to create anything on the screen. We also learned a lot about linux and the command line as many of us had only recently started developing on linux. On the back end, this was our first time using mongodb, which was also a good learning experience.

What's next for Set Match

We have many more features in mind for future implementation that weren't in the scope of our prototype today. One idea we had was to have a geotagging and nfc/qr code feature where you have to check in with your workout buddy to increase your Set Match level. We also wanted to implement a profile picture feature, a chat system so the user stays in the app more, leaderboards, and the ability to "take over" local gyms and/or exercise spots. There is a lot of untapped potential in our project that we are looking forward to implement in the future.