Six | Devpost

Overview

Six is an event-based social app that helps Georgia Tech students find and meet other students going to the same event before it starts. Whether you’re finding other people who might try out this new club, looking to party with people you haven’t met yet, or hoping to walk into a career fair with a few people from your major, Six finds your group. Students join an event, and six hours before it starts our algorithm places them in a group of four to six, matched on shared interests, major and event type. Members get six-second video introductions and a group chat, so they can make new buddies, network and arrive together. Inspired by how people met through shared plans in 2016, Six uses today’s technology to bring students back to meeting in person.

Inspiration & The Problem

We were inspired by how students met people in 2016, when connections formed mostly through shared plans and in-person gatherings. Georgia Tech has events almost every day, from career fairs and startup nights to concerts and cultural events, and we wanted to make meeting people at them as easy as it used to be, using today’s technology.

Event platforms show students what is happening on campus, but not who they can go with. Friends may have different interests or schedules, and approaching strangers at an event can feel forced. As a result, students often skip events they want to attend, or attend without meeting anyone new.

Our Solution: Six

Event-Based Group Matching: Just like choosing a team before game day, but built around events students already want to attend. Our rule-based algorithm groups students going to the same event by shared interests, major, year and campus area, and adjusts what matters most to the event. A career fair leans on major, and a concert leans on shared music taste.
Six-Second Introductions: Just like a quick hello at the door, but before the event. By utilizing the device camera and private video storage, each student records a clip that only their group can watch.
Event Group Chats: Using a realtime database, each group gets a dedicated chat for introductions, questions and arrival plans.

Key Features

Personalized Onboarding: A short questionnaire collects name, year, major, campus area and interests, followed by the six-second introduction.
Event Discovery: A featured event, upcoming events, search and filters, with recommendations that never limit browsing.
My Plans: Tracks whether an event is saved, in matching, or has a group ready, so students always know where they stand.
Group Page: One place for the event details and each member’s introduction, major and year.
Group Chat: Every group gets its own chat, where members can say hi, ask questions and pin a meeting spot and time so everyone can find each other at the venue.
Memories Camera: A camera button with 2016-style filters that saves captures from an event to the Memories section of the student’s profile.
Student Controls: Georgia Tech email sign-up, the option to delete an introduction, and the ability to report or block members.

Tech Stack & Implementation

To create Six, we first defined the core loop that everything else depends on: a student joins an event pool, the pool is split into groups, and each group gets a page and a chat. We built the app with React and TypeScript on the frontend and Node.js and JavaScript for the application logic. For the prototype, events, student profiles and event pools are seeded sample data, which let us demonstrate the full flow from sign-up to group chat.

The matching algorithm is rule-based and runs in JavaScript. When an event’s matching window closes, it first uses the size of the pool to decide how many groups to form, so every group has between four and seven students. It then scores students on shared interests, major, academic year and campus area, with weights that change by event category, and assigns them to groups. A final swap pass exchanges students between groups until no swap improves overall compatibility. We have not integrated with Georgia Tech systems, Engage or Corq.

Impact

Six aims to make it easier for students to attend events they are interested in and to meet people through them, whether the goal is a night out with new people or walking into a career fair with others from their major. Because every group starts from a real event, the connections are designed to continue in person. We have not yet run user testing, so this is our goal, not a measured result. In a pilot, we would track whether students who opt in are placed in a group, whether group members attend the event, whether they report talking to someone from their group, and whether they join a second event.

Challenges & What We Learned

In the process of creating Six, we encountered several product-design challenges. A group needs enough students to be useful, so we sized groups before scoring compatibility and designed Six to tell students plainly when a pool is too small, instead of placing them in a weak group. A strict six-hour window would also mean a 3 a.m. notification for a morning event, so we designed quiet hours around it. We also wanted to avoid the feel of a dating app, so we left out swiping, individual profile browsing and one-to-one messaging. Students join an event, not a person.

We learned that a shared event is a stronger starting point for meeting people than a profile, and that small groups remove the pressure of one-on-one meetings. We also learned that a matching system that can be explained in one sentence is easier to trust than a complicated one.

Future Directions

In the future, we would pilot Six with a small number of Georgia Tech events to set baselines before wider rollout. We would add last-minute matching for students who join after the window closes, and recurring event crews for groups that want to attend events together again. With permission, we would connect Six to campus platforms such as Engage and Corq for live event data. The goal is for every addition to bring students back to meeting in person.