SideKick

Inspiration

The inspiration comes from out own experience how we wish to know other women who have the same interest as us - especially as students in Computer Science, our classmates are often man. We experienced lost during our studies and finding peers for help is oddly difficult. University life shouldn't be like this, we believe women can empower women without needing to necessary know who each other is. Putting them together:

Female students face two key challenges on campus:

Scattered Information: Academic and administrative help is fragmented across group chats, societies, and informal networks, making it difficult to find trusted advice quickly.
Safety Concerns: Late-night campus routines can feel unsafe, and finding a trusted walking partner is difficult without exposing personal information to strangers.

What it does

SideKick is a privacy-first mobile application designed to create a safer, more connected campus experience for female students. With university email verification and anonymous nicknames, students can access trusted help and find safe walking companions—all within a verified community.

SideKick provides a verified, anonymous, and safe platform with three core features:

📚 Q&A Community
- Ask and answer questions by course and level
- Get trusted advice on modules, admin, careers, and campus life
- Mark helpful answers to build collective knowledge
🚶‍♀️ Safe Walk (1:1 Matching)
- Request a walking partner for any campus route
- Real-time location sharing with live map view
- PIN verification system for safe meet-ups
- First-come, first-served matching with verified students
💬 Community Chat
- Connect with fellow students in a verified, women-only space
- Share experiences, advice, and support
- Real-time messaging with anonymous nicknames

How we built it

Beatrix was responsible for the UI/UX design and frontend code, while Miya was responsible for the backend codes and debugging.

Challenges we ran into

Expo Go incompatibility with SDK
Firebase errors
Running out of GitHub Copilot credits
Using the right stack and plug-ins

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have practiced and prepared typescript before the hackathon we put a lot of effort into it, although the main stack is not necessary typescript but we are proud that we can scaffold the hold project together within 24 hours even when we have encountered a lot of red screens.

What we learned

A LOT, everything we have used in this project is almost new to us, we might have studied about them but not necessary worked with them before. Mobile development also gave us a new perspective how difficult it is when we are using them conveniently everyday (plus we are already using React Native which can build multi-platform app, we aren't even using Kotlin/Java or Swift to build native apps!).