UT Wash

The Problem:

Figuring out when to do laundry between classes–or hauling a hamper across the hall only to find every machine taken wastes time and creates unnecessary stress. It is a problem that every UT student in residence hall faces, and we felt that this problem was something that could be solved.

What it does:

UTWash shows real-time machine availability, live time estimates, and low-wait windows so students can plan laundry around their schedules. Students can reserve/queue for machines and check in and out to keep status accurate. The app has smart notifications built in, notifying you when a specific machine is free and suggesting “best times” based on resident data and your own habits.

How we built it:

Client-Side: React Native with Expo (TypeScript) for notifications and navigation, React Query for realtime sync/caching, and Expo Push for notifications. Authentication: Firebase Authentication (users can sign in with UT EID for saved data) Backend: Firebase Cloud Functions (TypeScript) for reservations, check-in, check-out, watchers; Firestore for database

Challenges we ran into:

When creating our product, we encountered several key challenges that tested both our technical and creative abilities. One of our first hurdles was deciding whether to develop UT Wash as a website or a mobile app, which was a decision that required balancing accessibility, user experience, and real-time performance. Once we committed to a website, we faced difficulties ensuring our Firebase database updated in real time to accurately reflect machine availability. Designing the interface to align with the University of Texas theme tested our creativity, as we wanted our sight to have a professional feel but also specific to Longhorns. Additionally, working with Firebase presented its own learning curve, from configuring authentication to managing asynchronous data flows. Despite these obstacles, overcoming them strengthened our teamwork and deepened our understanding of app development.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

What we're most proud of is the UI of our website. UT Wash is customizeable, easy to use, and best of all, convenient for all UT students. We truly believe that we made a product that can help UT students for years to come. Furthermore, we made a product that could directly improve our daily lives as students in residence halls, and the lives of thousands more.

What we learned

We learned how to use Typescript, JavaScript, and React, and how we could customize the site to our likings with CSS. Furthermore, we learned how to properly prompt Gemini and use Firebase to give us a basic skeleton of our code that we could implement on our own, and utilize a dataset within our product.

What's next for UT Wash -

Chatbot Assistant a conversational agent that understands your calendar and habits to suggest personalized times and washing frequencies. for students to interact with in order to figure out the best times for them to do their laundry, based on their daily schedule and tendencies. Additionally, an AI-based washing machine setting classifier that allows students to send in pictures of their dirty clothes and returns which washing machine setting works best for them.
Campus-wide Rollout expand to all residence halls across the campus and make any necessary changes to make app scalable and more widely applicable