SmartyPants

Inspiration

Having a good study group can help college students learn much better than grinding alone. But it's really hard to find the right one when you don't know anyone, everybody's schedule is different, people's preferences vary such as bigger vs. smaller group size, and even where to meet. We thought it'd help solve the problem for college students to find their perfect study groups based on their own needs and scedules.

What it does

It matches people to form a study group based on several factors like shared classes, meeting location, preferred group size, and compatiable schedules. It also provides in-app communication for your study groups.

How we built it

We used SwiftUI to build our frontend and connected it to Firebase as our backend services. We designed a matching algorithm that truly finds the study group perfect for you.

Challenges we ran into

In terms of design & architecture, we needed a way to organize app idea, and we accomplished that by:

creating design document which outlines app requirements
defining data structures, user interface, core features
frequently referencing during implementation

and we needed to create a seamless user interface, and we accomplished that by:

working with designers to develop prototypes
having frequent design iterations as the app concept matures

In terms of project management, we needed to consider abilities of each member, and we did so by:

Utilizing iOS Club Bootcamp materials to get everyone up to speed
Allowing for frequent Q&A to address any concerns

we also needed to ensure conflict-free collaboration, and we did so by:

Maintaining task board to minimize conflicts
Splitting into sub-teams which “own” a particular feature ## Accomplishments that we're proud of
We've implemented a functional matching algorithm that takes in various input factors and outputs the right study groups
We've built an in-app messaging application.
We've made a nicely animated home view that shows your daily study group sessions and creates to-do lists.

What we learned

We've learnt a great deal of what comes into the picture when designing an app from scratch with a big team efficiently, and exposed ourselves to new technologies and concepts. Knowing how to "sell" our app to people is also a key learning aspect.