SocialUniverse

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  Logo

Inspiration

We wanted to tackle the issue of user accountability. Part of the difficulty with modern online socialization is the level of abstraction it provides; often, we fail to recognize that those we interact with on social media are also people. The idea behind SocialUniverse was to create a system that would signify to users that the person on the other side of the screen was in fact a real person, and as we developed this idea we came up with several other features to improve user accountability.

What it does

The main function of SocialUniverse is that it connects a person's various social media accounts back to a single consistent identity. Users join the service, verify their identity, and link accounts on supported platforms. Once linked, a badge on each of the user's accounts signifies that they've verified themselves as a real person (and nothing else-- their personal information is theirs to disclose).

SocialUniverse keeps track of a fairly considerable amount of personal information, including that which is used to verify a user's identity. In order to keep this information safe, we've developed an internal database schema that relies on anonymized numerical IDs and restricts queries on all but one.

Additionally, SocialUniverse requires a person's age, and tracks the minimum ages of various platforms in order to protect younger users from age-restricted content.

How we built it

We approached the design from several angles. Dip laid out ideas and requirements and translated our ideas to concrete applications. On the front end, Andrea developed a Figma prototype of the main website, which Anar ported to Django. On the back end, Simon designed a database and used MySQL Workbench to plot it as an ER diagram.

Challenges we ran into

We did quite a bit of learning as we went, especially with regards to front-end development, so there were some stumbling blocks inherent to that (weird bugs, icons that won't line up, etc.). Additionally, we had some trouble in the initial brainstorming phase; while we were able to generate quite a few ideas, we struggled with settling on one idea.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Anar learned quite a bit about Django and translated it into a beautiful prototype site, and Andrea's graphic design work is impeccable. Overall, we're proud of how we were able to apply each of our skillsets to create a comprehensive prototype of our design.

What we learned

We learned a lot about brainstorming, generating ideas, and working together as a team on a complex project. Additionally, since we came from fairly diverse academic backgrounds, we were able to get a sense of each others' fields of work and broaden our design horizons.

What's next for SocialUniverse

The next phase of development for SocialUniverse is user research and practical refinement; while we have an initial prototype, we have yet to conduct any research into how it functions in the real world, which would guide further prototype development and help us further refine and better apply our ideas. To that end, Andrea drafted a guide for future research.

Built With

• bootstrap
• django
• figma
• mysqlworkbench