Inspiration
The idea of our project was to entertain the idea that this program would help computer science majors with finding a romantic partner as computer science majors are stereotypically seen to be socially inept and some of our friends are not in a relationship. Our UI inspiration came mostly from apps like tinder and Instagram as these websites share the similarity of having the user create their own profile that showcases who they are to other people that could be potential matches.
What it does
This project consists of an account creation/login with data stored with each of these accounts that will showcase on a profile. There is an aspect of filtering through and finding the best "match" for you, using the various tags and profile options each user is given like major, age, gender, and sexual orientation. This will prompt the user to take a look at the profile matched with them and personally choose whether or not they would like to pursue a connection with the other user. There is a home page where the profiles are presented to the user, a profile editor page where the user can update any of the information presented on their profile, a matches page where the user can see who they have matched with that has also chosen to match with them, and a message page where the user may contact any of the people they have matched with.
How we built it
We used HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the front end to design the overall look of the project. As for the backend, we utilized Python and Flask.
Challenges we ran into
There were many challenges we faced during our first hackathon. One of these challenges was getting used to the pacing of the event and spreading our workload while trying to communicate to one another what we were working on. During the start of the event, many issues occurred when we tried to figure out the method we would use to work on the project as a group, jumping from one shared coding website to another. Many smaller issues came up like not being able to have more than one person on a file at a time, overlapping css styling, and lots of backend to frontend connection issues. There were and have been a multitude of backend issues that our teammates ran into while trying to link the data within files to the front showcasing that data and information.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
One thing we are proud of is the amount of new skills we learned and being able to produce something in such a short span of time. Although there can still be room for improvement, we were able to learn a lot throughout this process and learn how to better prepare for the next hackathon.
What we learned
There were many things we learned during this hackathon as it was a first for most of the team. One thing we learned is how to better organize and structure ourselves. As mentioned above, we struggled to get into the pacing of this event and had an extremely slow start, but knowing what we know now, we are better suited for the next hackathon. We now know which method of sharing files we want to use. For the front end, we learned how to better utilize css and html to create webpages faster and more efficiently.
What's next for UCI Connected
This was a very ambitious project and to finish it all in the time of around two days with no issues was definitely a stretch. We will continue to learn from this project and pick it up again when after growing our skills and learning more about how to be better hackers.
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