UMD Foodies

Discover & attend campus free food events easily. Organize, explore, and savor culinary delights at UMD!

Comment

Inspiration

One of our team members loves to go to free food events on campus. She sifts through flyers and emails, but has no way to keep track of all the details in one place. She loves sharing free food events with her friends because as upperclassmen, she understands that everyone might be sick of dining hall food or too tired to cook after a long day of class. Another team member is always on the lookout for rare campus eats (especially Tendies) and will do anything to be up-to-date with UMD Dining's menu.

What it does

UMD Foodies provides a way for students to stay updated on all the food events happening on campus. With a user-friendly interface, it aggregates event details like date, time, location, and food offerings. Users can easily browse and add events, enhancing the campus dining experience. With Google Maps integration, users can see where exactly events are occuring and how they can get there.

How we built it

We built UMD Foodies using React Native and Expo for cross-platform compatibility, the Google Maps SDK for the map of campus with pin points of free food locations, and Firebase for real-time data storage.

Challenges we ran into

Navigating React for the first time presented a steep learning curve, consuming nearly four hours just to set up and troubleshoot issues because of superuser permissions and deprecated content. Transitioning from HTML/CSS meant adapting to React's structure, with tasks taking significantly longer than anticipated. For example, what would take us 10 minutes became 1 hour. We experienced compatibility issues when using libraries that did not support both web and mobile platforms. Integrating Google Maps proved tricky because the location kept defaulting to Google's California HQ! Additionally, we struggled with integrating a database because we wanted to use MongoDB, but that was more complex than anticipated, leading to a pivot towards Firebase.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Samar is proud of implementing the map feature, drawing upon skills honed in CMSC436. Sheldon is proud of his breakthrough moment when he managed to change the font after spending way too long on it. Angelyn is proud of when she managed to integrate Firebase after going in circles with MongoDB. Collectively, we are proud to have learned React Native in a short period of time, delivering a product that has the potential to enhance students' experiences.

What we learned

Sheldon learned how to integrate a calendar with events using React, Samar learned how to integrate Google Maps SDK in the context of React, and Angelyn learned how to use Firebase and started to memorize the commands for Git. We all learned how to use React and embraced the perseverance required to overcome initial hurdles. Despite challenges, Sheldon's determination fueled our progress until React setup success.

What's next for UMD Foodies

We want to enrich UMD Foodies with social features, enabling users to add and invite friends to foodie events seamlessly. Additionally, we want to integrate email parsing capabilities to automatically populate the database with events containing terms like "free food". These enhancements will further streamline event discovery and social interaction within the app. Finally, we want to implement a way for popular events to stand out more to our users.

Members

Angelyn Pham Samar Khan Sheldon Douglas

Share this project:

Updates