Tangle: Connect the North

Landing page
Dashboard
Search Capability
Recommendations
Adding New User

Inspiration Behind Tangle ⚛️

The idea for Tangle emerged from a recognition that traditional networking methods, such as LinkedIn profiles, have remained static, even as large in-person events like Hack the North make a strong comeback. We saw an opportunity to reimagine how people connect by creating a more dynamic and visual way of representing relationships formed at events. Tangle aims to bridge the gap by providing an interactive web app that helps participants remember, revisit, and reinforce connections made during events, ensuring those relationships don’t just fade into the background.🤝

How We Built Tangle 🛠️

Tangle is a web app powered by React for the front end and Convex for the back end, with the entire platform hosted on Vercel. We used a GoDaddy domain to make Tangle easily accessible to all users.🌐

Our backend, built with Convex, integrates a vector embedding search powered by Cohere. This allows us to offer advanced search functionality that helps users locate people they’ve met based on attributes and interactions.

On the front end, we designed a simple yet intuitive user interface in React, focusing on ease of navigation. The landing page introduces users to Tangle, while the home page allows them to search for individuals or features related to people they've met at the event. The query is sent to the backend, where it’s processed, and the results are returned in real-time.⚡️

Challenges We Overcame Building Tangle 🚧

Design Challenges 🎨 One of our main challenges was creating a platform that caters to different event attendees—hackers, recruiters, and speakers—all of whom have different goals. Designing Tangle to meet the needs of all these groups while maintaining a cohesive user experience required careful planning and iteration.

Vector Embeddings 🧠 A technical challenge was mastering the use of vector embeddings. These embeddings were critical for enabling intelligent search functions within Tangle. We invested considerable time in optimizing the embedding process to accurately capture the nuanced relationships between event attendees.

Personal Challenges 💪 Balancing external commitments and the time pressure of the hackathon was no easy feat. At one point, we experienced challenges leading to a demotivating lull 10 hours prior to submissions, but we pushed through as a team in the final hours to finish strong.

Accomplishments We Celebrate at Tangle 🎉

Successfully integrating Cohere’s vector embeddings for advanced semantic search within our app.
Mastering and utilizing Convex to build a robust and efficient backend.
Designing a user-friendly interface.
Overcoming personal time management challenges to deliver a working, innovative platform within the hackathon’s time constraints.

Lessons Learned from Tangle's Journey 📚

The Importance of Planning 📝 One of the key takeaways from building Tangle was the necessity of meticulous planning, especially regarding user flow and system architecture. Diving straight into coding without first understanding how users would interact with our app resulted in some avoidable setbacks and rework. We learned that investing time upfront in planning leads to a more streamlined and efficient development process.

Simplifying Systems 🧩 We initially overcomplicated parts of our application, which led to inefficiencies. Simplifying and focusing on the core functionalities of Tangle allowed us to optimize the system and deliver a better user experience.