UNIverse Student Communication Platform

We are seeking to bridge the accessibility gap between current and prospective students in relation to getting firsthand info from those attending universities around the world.

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Inspiration

Our team created UNIverse in the hopes of providing high school students with a way to interact with students at university so that they can make a more informed decision of where they would want to study. We felt like there was a need for a accessible, safe space for current students to share their university story with prospective students, so everyone has the opportunity to find their best fit for college. UNIverse is an online platform where users can sign up for an account and then have the option to interact with registered university students via chat. The website was designed using HTML, CSS, JavaScript and a database was implemented to keep track of user data and communication using Firebase, a Google Cloud Product.

What it does

It is a messaging platform where current and prospective students can create accounts and chat among one another. Users are taken to the sign in page upon arrival to the site. They also have the option to sign up for an account if one hasn’t already been made. Once they’ve signed in, users are taken to the home page. The home page displays a list of all registered university students, including information about their universities, programs, academic years as well as a button to redirect the user to a chat with that particular student. This dynamic display is possible thanks to a database, which also communicates with the browser to detect when a user is online or offline. After a student enters the chat room, they are free to send messages to the other student and also has the freedom to delete any messages that he or she had previously sent. Once the user has had the opportunity to have their questions answered, they can click the log out button on the navigation bar of the Home or Contact Us page and log out to successfully sign out of the website.

How we built it

The team create a domain with Domain.com and hosts the program through Github. The team used html to create elements on the website. Bootstrap and CSS to design the elements. Firebase to save user data. JavaScript to perform functionality and communicate with the Firebase Auth, Database, and Storage.

Challenges we ran into

The team spent a significant amount of time trying to implement a video chat functionality with npm, Nodejs and socket.io. Unfortunately, after many hours of trying, we were unable to get it to work and decided to implement texting instead.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

The team is very happy with the overall design and functionality of the website considering this is our first hackathon and that most of us did not have any experience with the languages and frameworks we used to built it prior to the event.

What we learned

  • HTML
  • CSS
  • Bootstrap
  • Nodejs
  • Socket.io
  • Javascript
  • Firebase
  • APIs
  • NPM
  • Website domains and hosting

What's next for UNIverse Student Communication Platform

The team would love to learn more about implementing security for the website to protect user data, and finalize implementing the video chat functionality. We would also like to implement a feed for public posts to the community, filters by university/major/country for users.

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