Uni-Roomie

Logo
Login Page for the app. You login with a google account.
Custom Drawer for the app
When you login you get taken to your profile page where you can view all your details.
You can edit your profile information and it is all updated within the database.
When selecting a new avatar you are asked how you would like to retrieve it.
You can use your phones camera to take a new avatar photo
Here you can see the updated avatar. Stored in the database also
Here is a list of contacts that you can select to chat with.
GIF
The chat functionality with the app. This allows users to communicate with each other.
GIF
When creating a new listing you load onto this empty form.
GIF
When creating a new listing you can select the location of the properties using google maps. The app informs you a location is set.
You can upload photos using your phones camera to the listing like this!
When you create a listing you are taken to the listing page after.
You can search for listings around you and specify filters you would like to apply to your search.
When you filter your listings, the listings show the ones within the filters. You can click on these to load the listing.
When Viewing a listing you have the option to message the owner, view the place on a map and request to join the property.
You can request to join a property and it starts a chat with the owner.
You can message the owner of the property to get more information.
You can view the profile of the owner of a listing.
You can view the location of a property and it centers the map on that area.
You can view all listings if you wish to so here are all the current listings.
When viewing all listings, you can easily load them on a map to view where they are!
To check whether anyone has requested to join your property you can select it from the drawer. If you have no requests, this page will load.
If a request has been made it becomes viewable and it can be accepted or denied or you can message the requester.

Inspiration

As university students, one of the most difficult things can be trying to find people to live with. With the covid 19 pandemic, this has become a growing issue as students have not been able to meet others to move in with when the pandemic is over.

What it does

This app aims to remove the difficulty in trying to find roommates or houses to move in with whilst at university. By signing up to the app with your Google account you can:

Edit your profile to add details about yourself (name, age, gender and profile photo) and your university life (University, course and study year).

If you have a house and are looking for roommates to move into it you can create a new house listing. Within a listing you can include:

Title (Name the listing)
Address (Location of the house) google maps have been used to implement this. You can select the location from a map and it is saved
Price Per Week
Total rooms in the property (How many people does the property accommodate)
Rooms available (How many people are you looking to move in)
Gender Preference (Useful if you would like to only find roommates of a single-gender)
Photos (Add photos to show the house)

If you are looking for a property to move into you can search for current listings:

When searching for listings you can:
Search for listings at your university
Filter by price, distance, rooms available and total rooms

When you search, all the properties that match the filters will be displayed and you can click on a property to display its details When viewing a listing you can

Request to join that properly if you want to move in
View the creator's profile to find out more about them
There is also a chat functionality within the application where you can message the creators of listings to get to know each other or find out more information on a property.

When a person requests to join a property, the owner of the listing can view it by looking at their listing requests on the drawer. From the requests, owners can:

Start a chat with the requester
Accept the request
Deny the request

When an outcome is provided the requesting user will receive a message from a chatbot to inform them of the outcome.

If you request the last room available and your request is approved, the listing is removed.

How we built it

A discord server was set up for communication between team members.
We set out a project plan of goals we would like to achieve and assigned members to complete each goal.
Once big updates were made, all code was merged to the main branch to ensure everyone had the most up to date code before continuing.
The app was built using flutter with a backend firebase database.
Emma focused more on the front end design and the others worked on both the backend and some front end development.
All of the data within the app is retrieved and stored within the firebase database. None of the data is dummy data.

Challenges we ran into

Half of our team have never used flutter or firebase before so background research had to be taken place on how we could achieve our goals before we could begin coding properly.
Each of us had a moment where we ran into errors that we could not fix but as a team, we were able to work together to fix these bugs.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are extremely proud that we have managed to make a functioning app within the space of 24 hours. The app looks at solving a very prominent current world issue and encourages socialising in times when that is more difficult than ever before.
We managed to divide work to allow people to code to their strengths and this made coding efficient.
We have created an app with a professional design that follows a set colour scheme and looks nice.

What we learnt

We have learnt how to work as a team successfully dividing work between team members to ensure we are being as efficient as possible.
Having very little to no experience with flutter and firebase, we are also now all confident with using these technologies when developing android apps
Our skills in using Github with branches has also improved after having to merge code between devices.
We have learnt how to load the app to our own phones which shows that this is a feasibile application that with more time, can be deployed in the real world.
We have learnt how to use google cloud so not only are we using firebase, but we also have google maps set up.

What's next for Uni-Roomie

There is room for a lot of extra functionality within uni-roomie. We plan to implement:

Group chats with the people who are moving into the same house as you.
Admin users will be set up on the system with the ability to moderate listings.
Due to the pandemic, people may not be able to view the houses so users will be able to upload virtual tours to the listing.