SwipeMe!

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Inspiration

Ever have meal plan money left over at the end of the semester? There's no reason to not do something with it, and we're here to help.
Innovation to us means solving a problem in a new and creative way, and we didn't want to design our project solely around AI, as there are other ways to redefine and innovate. Knowing this, we solved this problem aimed towards a new demographic, and allowed them to foster relationships along the way.
There's no better innovation than one that incorporates many different problems into one solution, and makes people go, "I'm surprised no one came up with this earlier?"

What it does

SwipeMe! allows students to connect with others over a meal on campus. We allow underclassmen seeking mentorship with upperclassmen or simply students looking for more friends to use any extra meal plan money they have to meet others.

How we built it

We used Swift for the frontend/backend, and Firebase Firestore for the database. We chose to use Swift as we wanted our app to be geared towards students, and make it as easy as possible to use. What student these days aren't looking at their phone 24/7?

Challenges we ran into

We ran into challenges both styling the app and plugging in Firebase, as Xcode isn't very cooperative. We also had a fair bit of Git mishaps.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of getting this done. It's the first time any of us have completed an app to this degree in this short of a time, and it makes us all proud. We all became closer friends along the way and also just had fun.

What we learned

As a team, we learned how small design choices can have a big impact on usability, fairness, and meaningful social connection. We refined features to make the app inclusive, like creating a system that randomly pairs students to prevent cliques from forming around demographics. We also considered fair ways to reward participants without turning interactions into transactions. Through research, ideation, and presentation design, we saw how thoughtful decisions shape the overall user experience and community impact.

What's next for SwipeMe!

We really want to bring more recommendations and integrations into the app.
First, we would put a recommended tab, which creates matches based on interests, majors, or anything else the user would want to connect with another student over, possibly incorporating an LLM to help with matching.
We would also integrate payment systems like Venmo or PayPal, and than have an in-app messaging system, or integrate with iMessage.