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Indiwrap Design
Inspiration
Our inspiration for this project was to make coordinating with roommates easier. We wanted an app that made communicating in shared living spaces simpler.
What it does
Our project is a roommate coordination application with various features to make communicating with roommates and housemates much easier. Users are able to create an account and login. Once a user signs up and logs in, they are able to access the main app. The first page encourages them to either join a household or invite other users to a new one. There is also a status that can be set and seen by other users. The chores the user has for the week will display on the home page. There is another page that displays all the chores. Users will automatically be assigned new chores when the new week begins. Users also have the ability to create events which are displayed on a separate calendar page.
How we built it
We used the MERN stack, composed of MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js. To help work coordinate with other team members, we used a shared Github repository and worked in branches to help minimize merge conflicts. We first designed the application on Figma, then split our team, with two of us working on the backend and two of us on the front end. We made sure to write a document so our variable names were the same when fetching backend data from the frontend. Finally, to deploy our application, we used Render to deploy both the frontend and backend.
Challenges we ran into
Some challenges we ran into were adapting to MongoDB. The primary weakness was the difficulty of writing more complex query statements. We were unfamiliar with MongoDB’s functionality and capabilities, leading to unoptimized code. Another challenge we encountered was connecting the backend to frontend, as there was a lack of communication involving the data being returned.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Some accomplishments we’re proud of are designing and building a deployable full-stack application in a team. It was really rewarding to effectively work in Git branches and be able to see each part of the project be fleshed out.
What we learned
The biggest thing we learned was working with MongoDB and working with others on Git branches concurrently. Some things that we worked on would be communication, keeping the shared documentation updated to date with any changes would be helpful for both sides.
What's next
A lot of what’s next is polishing up the project and squashing bugs. There was still a lot more that we wanted to implement with a lot of our implementation missing the ability to be deleted. We had a whole laundry timer page concept that ended up being scrapped as it was lower on the hierarchy. We could also look into responsive web design for a desktop version of the application. There were also plans to be able to edit the color scheme and allow users to edit their profile, show shared items and groceries. To keep users up to date with the most recent changes to their house, we could also implement a notification inbox / push notification system.
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