Uni-Maps

Uni-Maps is an interactive map the helps students find events happening around campus every day. Uni-Maps is able to help students navigate to events down to the building and room.

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Inspiration

During our first year of university, there were often many events that were hosted on campus, but we were not aware of all of them at the time. We wanted to create a centralized app that gathered information about all the different events that were happening on campus. We also wanted to create an app that helps students to navigate to those events as well, since we understand that people can easily get lost on campus and the struggles of finding the right building and room as well.

What it does

In the basic sense Uni-Maps was built with 2 parties in mind:

  1. Students: Uni-Maps was created to help students become aware of all the beneficial events that occur on campus throughout the year. Whether the events can help with mental health, career building, academic support, or even social gatherings. Uni-Maps wants to help students to be able to take advantage of these events by leading them right to it. Uni-Map is a centralized platform that notifies students what is happening each day so students never miss out on what is happening.

  2. Organizers: Uni-Maps helps organizers to not only announce their events but also help to direct more people to their events. With the built-in GPS system using the Google Maps API, Uni-Maps are able to help students find the events that organizers spend a lot of time organizing and preparing. By having the organizers simply filling out a form marking out the event, date, time, and details, their event is automatically uploaded to Uni-Maps listing where students can easily filter and find what kind of events are happening. Uni-Maps aims to help organizers reach as many people as possible as well as make events as big as possible.

How we built it

  • Uni-maps is a mobile app built using Flutter and the Dart programming language
  • Google Cloud API used to access google maps
  • Back-end data was stored in Firebase to store user information such as email and passwords.

Challenges we ran into

  • Routing the screens using Android Studio and mobile phones to run on VSCode as everyone in our team has different technologies
  • Integrating the front end and back end together while working remotely, we overcame this challenge by sharing screens and using the live screen extension on VSCode

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  • We’re proud of the aesthetic design and easy to use user interface that we developed using Flutter and Android Studio Emulator
  • Well organized and great communication between team members
  • Finally, the idea itself could potentially help many new students find their classes, interesting events, as well as garner attention for those who are hosting
  • We were able to add the map functionality with multiple markers to track all events

What we learned

  • How to store user information from forms and check for valid form entries
  • Experience working with Flutter, Dart, Firebase, and Google Cloud API

What's next for Uni-Maps

  • Scalability is definitely possible for this type of project. Partnering with many schools to get a detailed campus layout, updated lecture room numbers as well as up to date events allowed this app to be useful especially for those new to the school
  • This could easily be implemented as well from a business standpoint by being able to keep track of important events, meeting areas for employees as long as the blueprint of the building is received
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