The Wave

Inspiration

The idea for The Wave was born from our own experiences of wanting to discover local social events and gatherings but often missing out due to a lack of centralized information. We wanted to create a platform that makes it easy for users to find spontaneous meetups, community events, and popular venues around them. By leveraging real-time geolocation, we aim to bring people together and foster community engagement, whether it's a pop-up event at a local park, a live band at a neighborhood bar, or a spontaneous gathering at a coffee shop.

What it does

"The Wave" allows users to discover and participate in events happening around them by using geolocation data to map social gatherings. Users can see a live map of local events like small gatherings, pop-up events, bars, and restaurants; making it simple to explore, connect, and socialize.

How we built it

We developed "The Wave" as a mobile app using SwiftUI for a sleek, interactive interface. MongoDB manages our user and event data, while Flask acts as the backend API to handle data requests and process proximity-based searches. We used Terraform for infrastructure provisioning, ensuring our app can handle scaling efficiently as more users join.

Challenges we ran into

Building The Wave was more complex than anticipated. We started with React Native but switched to Swift for a smoother native experience. Customizing maps also proved challenging; we initially used Mapbox but transitioned to Apple Maps for better integration, refining features like camera angles and night mode. Many team members were working with unfamiliar technologies, leading to difficulties with scheduling, resolving GitHub merge conflicts, and connecting the frontend and backend. Deploying our app on the cloud using Terraform was another learning curve, as it was our first time handling such configurations. Despite these hurdles, we gained valuable skills and insights.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of creating a fully functional prototype of The Wave that successfully maps and displays user events in real-time. Overcoming the technical challenges of integrating geolocation services with our tech stack was a major achievement. We're also proud of building a user-friendly interface with SwiftUI, allowing users to effortlessly and anonymously navigate and discover events around them. Setting up a scalable cloud infrastructure with Terraform was a key accomplishment, enabling our app to handle future growth.

What we learned

Working on "The Wave" taught us a lot about geolocation technology, user data privacy, and the importance of scalable backend solutions. We also learned the value of cross-functional collaboration in overcoming technical hurdles and creating a polished product.