Sundae

Sundae home page
Class schedule module
Auth0 Login Screen
Data stored in Firebase associated with Auth0 account

Inspiration

As students, we were collectively inspired by the need to manage projects and tasks across classes exacerbated by incoherent student information systems. Our goal was to create a project that contains any module a student could need, from avoiding procrastination to reducing stress.

What it does

Sundae provides modules that help students to succeed in college. So far, we’ve implemented one module that keeps track of a student’s classes. Based on the tech stack, we could implement more modules that communicate with Firebase.

How we built it

The app uses Auth0 to handle authentications. When a user logs in, Auth0 provides a unique user ID which we use to query Firebase. From there, the user communicates with the Express server, where the Express server combines the services and handles the application logic. Express is hosted on Heroku.

Challenges we ran into

The main challenge was time. If we had more time, we could implement more modules for students to use. Most of the hackathon we worked on building the infrastructure for the project (database communication, backend, frontend). We also had some difficulties with git and with integrating our project changes in general. We deployed our application despite these challenges, as we re-strategize over time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We’re proud to have combined multiple technology stacks into one project. We split the work up - Chris worked on the Firebase database, Emmanuel and Zubair worked on the React frontend, and Isaac worked on the Express backend and Auth0. We successfully integrated all of our work into one cohesive project.

What we learned

We learned that it takes a long time to get features fully functional. We didn’t fully accomplish our original plan simply due to time constraints. We learned skills regarding API calls, React dev, Firebase communication, and deployment.

What's next for Sundae

In the future, we could build upon the infrastructure we have for Sundae to add more modules. We considered adding a To-Do list, a module to reduce procrastination, a Pomodoro timer, a multimedia player, and more. We didn’t have time to implement these but could do it in the future. We would need to revise the development/production environments to make development easier, which could make progress much faster.