SideQuest

Inspiration

As busy college students, life often gets in the way of planning events with friends. Differing schedules and interests make it hard to incorporate everyone, and the process usually looks something like this: someone in the group chat tries to propose ideas, some people react to the message, and some do not even respond at all. In the end, no real, set plan is ever made.

That's why we built SideQuest, an iMessage extension that eliminates the burden of planning events to accommodate everyone's busy schedule.

What it does

SideQuest helps a group turn a conversation into a plan. It takes in things like availability, budget, location, and preferences, then creates a few realistic hangout options. The group can vote, choose a winner, open the location in Apple Maps, and add the event to their calendars.

How we built it

We built SideQuest natively in Swift and SwiftUI. We used MapKit for real locations, EventKit for calendar integration, Core Location for location-based planning, and the Messages framework for the iMessage experience. We also designed the app to feel warm, simple, and social instead of like a scheduling tool.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was working around limitations in how iMessage extensions can access chat history. We also had to balance many different constraints at once, like budget, time, age, and location. Another challenge was making the demo reliable without depending on multiple phones or external services.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of working together through the pressure of time and the inconvenience of being ill. We are also proud of bringing our ideas to life from scratch.

What we learned

Through this project, we learned to accommodate everyone's schedules and interests. We also learned how to properly use Git by collaborating in different branches.

What's next for SideQuest

Next, we want to make SideQuest fully collaborative across multiple phones. We would like to add real-time voting, deeper calendar integration, smarter location balancing, better venue discovery, and more personalized group recommendations.