UCarpool (Fab Five)

Homepage, riders and drivers specify their trips
Drivers can accept who they would like to share their rides with
Users can specify a location for pick-up arrangements

Our Inspiration

As University students, we spend a lo of time commuting to the University on a daily basis. A lot of our precious time is taken away waiting for the public transit. Yet, there are many students that drive to the University by themselves. Our goal is to maximize student productivity by saving them the time spent commuting on public transport. Additionally, this reduces the money spent by people who drive to the University ALONE.

What UCarpool does

Our web application enables peer-to-peer carpooling to drive to a common destination (Either from or to the University). Students with cars can offer cheap rides to other students who happen to be located on the same route. The driver/passenger can make arrangements via an in-app chat system. This allows for a chance to make new friendships, reduce the carbon print by having less drivers on the street, all while saving money!

How its Built

We built this web application on a Firebase platform which provided authentication and a live database. The front-end is made with React.

Challenges we ran into

Our team was inexperienced with web development. However, we did not let our technical inexperience get in the way. Although we were challenged with lots of issues such as environment configuration, hosting, learning new libraries and technologies, we kept trying and helped each other to troubleshoot issues.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating a front-end (to be developed to full-stack soon) while being in a time-crunch and multiple environment changes.

What I learned

We gained lots of valuable skills in both technical and team-work side of things. As a group, we learned how to communicate better over time and plan the next few hours to get the best out of them. We learned that even though we encountered many road blocks, our passion for learning more about web development did not stop, and that we will continue to explore more!

What's next for UCarpool

We plan to finish the remaining functionalities and back-end in a relaxed coding environment because of its potential. We believe that this is a feasible idea, and that it could be implemented not only in UofC, but other Universities as well!