soba

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  general project architecture

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  the algorithm

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  backend architecture

Inspiration

The name inspiration came from our former VandyHacks president Aadarsh + his incredible project naming skills – like nimbus and kombucha. We settled on soba because we have dorms with dining halls inside them, it means room in Croatian, and it comes with a fun acronym! The project idea came largely from our own experiences with the housing process during this spring – and how much of a nightmare students were under. (Right now, we're halfway through the process and approximately 5% of seniors, 60% of juniors, and almost 75% of sophomores don't have a place to live).

What it does

We live on a residential college campus – which means we're required to stay in dorm rooms for at least our first three years. The issue is that many students approach the housing allocations not being aware of all of their room options, what those can look like, or how to proceed if they do not get their first choice. soba is a social and administrative platform that fills a void for students needing information about the housing process. It uses information that is difficult (or impossible without the right connections) to find to match students with potential dormitories based on their interests and currently considered roommates. It also uses current housing statistics to determine whether a group of students potentially has access to a housing option through a percentage based-system, shows the amenities accessible to them in their room and common spaces, and allows them to view current and past resident reviews about specific locations on campus.

How we built it

Login with google using Firebase authentication, database using mongoDB with python, mobile-first front-end built with React.

Challenges we ran into

We had a fun time integrating mongoDB into our front-end and getting the two of them to talk together, as well as an issue with Firebase authentication due to a very recent update to Firebase-React codependencies. We're very happy to say those problems have been resolved.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're really proud of what we were able to do despite all waking up at 4am to drive all the way here from Vanderbilt. We took turns trying to sleep as much as we could and truly did our best in the face of all of the challenges thrown at us!

What we learned

Austin: I learned the importance of proper documentation and tooling for those using your applications or tools. Many of the setup steps could have been significantly more efficient in learning if there was really clear documentation to follow along

Kari: This was my first time really working as a product manager of a project, so it was great to get the feel to check-in on specific tasks, weigh pros and cons of different alternatives, and learn how to present our work to a potential client!

Kyle: I do a lot of work with projects that are already set-up and where the ideas are already given. I had a really fun time deciding what to use and then building it up – it was satisfying to see all of the progress.

Julian: I got the opportunity to work on a little bit of everything. I haven't been able to do much technical work outside of classes and our projects there are not the best at mimicking industry, so it was great to try and learn something quickly that feels much more applicable.

What's next for soba

We hope you love our application! We plan to clean up the project where and make our app shine, then continue by adding additional functionality not yet present in the application. You can find some additional documentation about what we did, as well as the slides we used to present under the "try it out" links below. soba leads to our technical documentation while soba slides leads to our presentation.

Built With

• css
• firebase
• html
• javascript
• mongodb
• react