SlugGram

Inspiration

Interesting club and school events are often shared on platforms like Instagram, where they constantly get mixed up and lost among personal posts. As a result, students frequently miss out on experiences that could genuinely help them connect with peers and explore new interests. Therefore, we set out to create an app that centers around school life both educationally and socially, aiming to empower students to feel more involved in their college community.

What it does

This app serves as a way for students to share club meetings, activities, and social events in one organized space. It allows students to save events directly to their calendars, making it easier to stay informed and follow through on the activities they care about. Beyond events, the app promotes academic collaboration by enabling students to create and join study groups for their classes, automatically connecting members through group chats to encourage teamwork and shared learning.

How we built it

We used Tailwind CSS, React, and Vite on the front end. In the backend, we used FastAPI in Python. Along the guidelines, we utilized AI tools to assist us in the debugging and optimization process of our code. This allowed us to work more time efficiently while also deepening our understanding of development practices.

Challenges we ran into

As beginner hackers, we were initially unfamiliar with many of the platforms and tools required to create our app. This meant that our first challenge was setting up our computers. This process involved troubleshooting numerous installation and configuration errors. Towards the middle of the development process, we experimented with additional platforms like Auth0, Claud.ai, and MongoDB. Transitioning between them introduced additional difficulties. Throughout the project, we spent a significant amount of time debugging and resolving coding errors, which ultimately strengthened our problem-solving skills and persistence.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud that we were able to implement Auth0 into our web application, successfully providing an extra layer of protection and effortless login for our users. We are also proud to have created a UCSC themed UI/UX that consists of a simple, user-friendly layout. Moreover, we were able to identify and add additional features that current social media apps lack to make event advocating and event searching a simpler process.

What we learned

We learned how to set up our web development environment and link different applications together. We gained experience in the installment and integration of supporting third-party applications and tools to make the web development process more efficient, improving security and enhancing functionality. Through this process, we also developed problem-solving skills by debugging errors and managing dependencies. Additionally, we strengthened our understanding of full-stack development, version control, and collaborative coding practices.

What's next for SlugGram

We’re excited to expand the user base of SlugGram towards the wider population of UCSC students. We would like to work towards getting all clubs and organizations of UCSC to use the app. Our ultimate goal is to expand SlugGram to universities worldwide, fostering community and student initiative globally. Recognizing widespread use of Instagram for students, we plan to promote user inclination to onboard by linking Instagram to the application. This will allow students to conveniently share their posts on SlugGram at the same time. Lastly, we would also like to implement an AI feature that will generate recommended posts for the user based on their prompted preferences.