Inspiration
Although remote learning has come a long way in a very short time since March, one way that it continues to lack are the casual social interactions you might have on the way too and from class. Often times, the mere nature of having strictly business-like classroom environments and meets all day will lead to daily burnout.
This project seeks to solve this issue. By creating an interface of the "in between" times, users will be able to virtually walk their way to class, and finally have a means of waving a quick hello or giving a smile to people down the hall. There will be a place for events to be published or to have a conversation with a project partner after class in a totally safe way during these unprecedented times.
What it does
Users will enter their schedule into a client-side web interface that connects to a remote server. After doing so, their classes get randomly assigned to virtual rooms, and their avatar will walk from class to class. In the event that two users are near each other in the hallway, a box will appear in the site footer that offers those two users the ability to chat!
How I built it
I built an HTML layout for the site and then used P5js to animate certain components of the site so that they are dynamic. This allows the site to be malleable and change given the state of different users.
Challenges I ran into
Unfortunately, I don't have much experience in setting up a server-side application. As such, this website mostly acts as a proof-of-concept tool.
Accomplishments that I'm proud of
I think the idea and the site both look really nice! My experiences with web development are very raw, so I think that given my skills, the idea was able to manifest itself nicely into a cool site!
What I learned
In the making of this project, I learned the tool P5js to build dynamic animation for the site itself. The tool was particularly well equipped for this site because it can easily link to Javascript and dynamically adjust the inner HMTL of site objects to make the site as a whole function.
What's next for Virtual Hallway
I would love to meet someone or learn the skills to implement the server-side of this application! I think it would be incredibly cool to give students a means of getting those smaller interactions, and I think this tool has all of the potential to do so!
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