StudyBuddy

Inspiration

Our inspiration came from a group of students who would regularly attend office hours we hosted throughout the semester. They developed strong bonds alongside bettering themselves in their academic pursuits through group studying. Therefore, we wanted to extend these types of opportunities to students throughout the Stony Brook Community so that they might find their next study buddy.

What it does

Our application connects students with study partners to make learning more enjoyable and effective. Whether you need help with a particular subject or just want to stay motivated, our platform makes it easy to find a study buddy who shares your goals and learning style. With personalized scheduling features for both in-person and virtual options, you'll be on your way to academic success in no time!

How we built it

We built this application in 3 main steps:

Figma design
Developed frontend, UI/UX design
Developed our backend database using MongoDB and Express

First, we used Figma to make a template of our application so that we had a concrete visualization of what we were going to build. From our designs, we decided to use Material UI to implement our figma designs as closely as possible. Then, we incorporated other libraries such as the Google Maps API to fully implement the frontend functionalities of our application. After this, to efficiently store and distribute our data we used MongoDB and Express, following the popular MERN Stack. Finally, though we weren’t able to fully connect the frontend and backend in the given time frame, we were able to use mock data to populate our entries to display the desired flow of our application.

Challenges we ran into

Over the course of this hackathon, we ran into quite a few challenges. One challenge we ran into was handling multiple merge and dependency conflicts. We were able to resolve this through an organized and collaborative effort. Another challenge we ran into was that most of our team was unfamiliar with the backend tools and technologies such as MongoDB and Express. We were able to overcome this hurdle by learning and experimenting different ways of using our required technologies. Finally, our last and most daunting challenge was the short time frame of 24 hours. Due to this, we had to improvise and be innovative with many of the technical decisions we had to make. Other than these challenges, we had a wonderful time at the hackathon.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of the amount of information that we were able to learn together and implement within these last 24 hours such as version control, use of the Google Maps API, MongoDB, Express, Material UI, and React. Throughout this hackathon, we had fun, many laughs, and much pain. But in the end, we learned plenty.

What’s next for Study Buddy

In the future, we hope to fully finish integrating the frontend and the backend so that users can get the full experience of using our application in real-time. To make sure we fully finish our application and continue implementing more features we are planning on meeting at least once a week to develop our app together. We hope to one day make sure that all students can experience the plethora of benefits associated with having a Study Buddy.