Swipe

Inspiration

Many first years I know have little use of their excess swipes in their unlimited dining plan, and many 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students lack dining plans but still want to have access to on-grounds dining. As such, Swipe was my attempt to connect these two groups together to help UVA students get fed.

What it does

Swipe allows people to submit swipe requests at different dining halls around Grounds, and have other students fulfill those requests by swiping them into the given dining hall.

How we built it

I used XCode to create the iOS app that interacts with a Google Cloud Firebase database to store and display swipe requests.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge I ran into was the aesthetic of the application, as well as an inability to add a stronger incentive/social aspect to the app. I would have loved to add an ability to "sell" swipes via a connection to Venmo/PayPal, or to have people who frequently swipe others into dining halls gain achievements or other such rewards.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

I'm very proud of making my very first iOS and using Google Cloud for the first time. I had never worked with Swift either, so being able to familiarize myself with this in a very short time period was incredibly rewarding.

What we learned

I learned that it's incredibly important to design the general architecture of your project near the start of your project. I struggled having to adapt my existing code to constantly changing visions of my project.

What's next for Swipe

I am incredibly passionate about this project, and think it can be a useful tool to combat food insecurity at UVA. To incentivize swipers, adding a small charge for swipes of less than five dollars could incentivize them. To incentivize swipees, I would add a reviewing system, along with more features to track how your swipe request has been progressed. By creating more trust and transparency for the swipees, more students will be inclined to use it.