Inspiration
A number of people eat alone on college campuses. After dozens of user interviews, we learned that people have a need to meet new friends when eating alone in an unintended manner. In the meantime, asking a random person to eat with is very difficult. Such unintended habits of eating alone lead to severe loneliness, as well as a disconnected community.
What it does
Table C is an app in which users can post conversation topics at a location they plan to have a meal. Others can then join the tables nearby their location. The app enables you to have a chat with people you're scheduled to eat with and also filter whom and how many you'd like to have on your table.
How we built it
We got together and whiteboarded out what we'd need for the app, discussing data structure and organization and hashing out user requirements with engineering ones. We picked our roles for the project and went to town, collaborating on design decisions and sorting out bugs and gotchas.
Challenges I ran into
Deploying our application was the biggest challenge by far. None of us had ever used AWS before, and there's quite a learning curve there. We spent quite a lot of time figuring out what we didn't know we didn't know.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
For the past couple of months, Alex Lim, our project manager, has been running a physical prototype of this idea by setting up an open community table at the Babson College campus dining hall. It has been a great success and attracted many people to eat together and meet new people. We wanted to expand this initiative by utilizing technology and further community engagement.
What I learned
Front-end development is unpleasant. How Firebase works. Our old age has shown its ugly face (staying up all night is impossible).
What's next for Table C
As for community engagement efforts, we plan on launching a crowdfunding campaign to promote Table C through distributing Table C kits (tablecloth, marketing materials, whiteboard decal, etc.) so that other ambassadors will promote Table C in their colleges.
With our app, Table C will be gradually expanded to companies, restaurants, cafes, and bars in urban areas. Our ultimate target includes enabling senior citizens in rural areas to connect with new friends.
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