Sonder

Inspiration

Everyday, college students pass by hundreds of students on their walk to class. To most people, these strangers are simply small fragments of their surroundings. We were inspired by the term, Sonder. Sonder is the realization that those around you, including strangers that pass by, live their own complex lives. We want to connect college students in a new way by shedding light onto the things that each of us enjoy everyday.

What it does

Sonder allows college students to upload an image and line of text to share a part of their life that they enjoy. They can scroll through a feed of their peers' posts and see all of the distinct, yet similar, lives we live. The anonymous feature allows students to freely share about their lives and bond over the small things.

How we built it

We built Sonder around the React library, while utilizing Tailwind for our styling, and Firebase as our database. We also integrated blockchain through MetaMask, which allows us to authenticate users, and preserve anonymity.

Challenges we ran into

To be honest, the main challenge that we ran into was our own lack of knowledge. We struggled with grasping many concepts, especially regarding areas that we had little to no experience in, such as blockchain and databases. When implementing the authentication, we initially struggled to utilize MongoDB through Docker, and we spent lots of time struggling with this issue, before abandoning it altogether in favor of Firebase, which was much more intuitive.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

As a team with no previous knowledge of blockchain, we were able to implement a basic blockchain authentication system. We learned how to utilize MetaMask to serve as a form of identification for our users to log in.

What we learned

We learned about current blockchain technologies and real-world applications from WEMADE. From there, we explored MetaMask wallets and learned how to implement databases using Firebase. Utilizing firebase, we learned how to upload images, concatenate files in firebase, and query user inputs into real time data in firebase.

What's next for Sonder

In the future, we would like to add more customizations, allowing students to post photos, videos and songs. We also hope to open this platform to other colleges across the country. We hope that Sonder can provide a connection for college students all over the country, by sharing one moment at a time.