Inspiration
The rise of technology and the internet has been responsible for pushing us farther apart. That is why we seek to help bring members of our society closer by facilitating bonds over common interests and a shared desire to learn.
We want people to experience the fulfilment of teaching, where they can help others find enjoyment in the hobbies they love, while also building friendships and, eventually, a community. Learning is something people are proud of but rarely have a place to show. We wanted to give them a platform for this, and specifically, we wanted to be able to connect people from a wide range of specialties who otherwise would never meet.
What it does
The main premise of Skill Up is for people to mutually teach each other skills. Individuals are to enter the skills they are proficient in and able to teach on their profiles. After which they are able to search up a skill they want to learn.
A list of individuals able to teach the skill will then come up, and then they organise sessions where they can mutually teach each other. This search can also use filters such as whether the session is online or in person, and also time frame, such as in the next 3 days, in the next week, or in the next fortnight.
SkillUp utilises a token system, where 1 token equates to being able to book 1 session that does not require the user to have to teach in return. This was included, so users who initially may not be confident with any skills, can first learn from more experienced users. Users start off with 2 tokens, and each week users gain one for free. Users can gain more tokens by teaching people without mutually being taught in return. Sessions where users mutually teach each other do not consume tokens (if on 0 tokens, mutual sessions can still be booked).
How we built it
The tech-stack used for this was, react for the frontend and supabase for the backend. Playwright was also used to facilitate UI testing, to ensures faster development cycles. Libraries used for frontend functionality, was three js on the home page for the blocks animation, and react-map-gl for the map feature.
Challenges we ran into
The two main challenges were deciding how we could build an app that solves a real world issue and ensuring fast enough development cycles to build features within the 24 hour constraint. To solve a real world issue, we looked at forum pages as well as anecdotal experiences to find problems that required a new approach to what the industry does. To ensure faster development life cycles, we would leverage both AI testing through playwright as well as human testing to ensure complete feature coverage of our ideas, and batched changes through requirements files that the team would agree and iterate upon.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud of the experienced we have gained in developing software under pressure in short amounts of time, as well as developing a working prototype that can solve real world problems.
What we learned
We learned how to use supabase to make fast prototypes, use react to create frontends and most importantly collaborate as a team to split workload and operate faster than a singe person would.
What's next for Skill Up
Develop a user base so we could build a strong sense of community, and create a platform that fosters connections between communities through sharing their knowledge/skills.
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