Inspiration
The inspiration for UNIverse comes from a cross between Linkedin, Microsoft Teams, Quizlet and our experience as first-years in university during COVID. It was very difficult to meet people this year, let alone people studying our course at our university. It was also hard to find useful resources to study with too. Therefore, our aim with UNIverse is to solve all these challenges in one application. We want to make it easier for students across UK to connect with others doing their course (or even a different course) so that students, especially first-years, don't feel alone in this new learning environment. University brings about a lot of stress and the mental health issues among students so we want to make sure students have access to support from peers going through the same thing, and have a place where they can find the most useful resources/notes tailored for their course and have online study sessions with coursemates.
What it does
A user has to first sign up with their university email. Once they have done that, they have access to a notes page which will allow them (in the future) to filter search for notes/resources/videos based on the date they were uploaded, course, topic, university module etc. Students can also upload their own notes which can earn them points based on their ratings. Students also have access to a study group page where they can either create a new room to study with friends or join an ongoing group. Students can earn points here by being in 1hr long study groups and taking the recommended 15 mins break using the break function in the room. Furthermore, the networking page is available for students to search for, chat and make new friends doing their course, a different course, in their university or elsewhere.
How we built it
Our website prototype was built using HTML, which enabled the structure of our site, and CSS which enabled us to design the visual layout of the sit. We also used Javascript to make our website prototype interactive.
Challenges we ran into
Since there was only 2 of us, there wasn't enough time to get a lot of the interacting parts of the website done and struggled with creating our own databases for the notes and users etc.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud that even though not all features are implemented completely in this prototype, we have shown our UI designs and branding for our website, which are detailed and have implemented the more important interactive features like the notes page.
What we learned
During this project, we learned how to use javascript for the first time whilst also improving our HTML and CSS skills to create our own website.
What's next for UNIverse
The next steps for UNIverse:
- Create database for notes hub and user's login details
- Implementing the study group page to create video chat rooms
- Implement the networking page with the chat page
- Making the website mobile friendly
- Have a section in the profile page for interesting jobs/opportunities for uni students/useful advertisements
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