Zot Hub

Our DJANGO Rest API Clubs List Endpoint
Our AI-generated Recommendations REST Endpoint Based Off User History
Our Website Search Page
Our Website Home Figma Page
Our Website Individual Page
Our Website Upcoming Events Page

Inspiration

Each team member, individually, is a part of at least 3-4 clubs. Frustrated with trying to keep track of our weekly club events, we sought out to create a solution that would allow UCI students to stay up to date with their busy club schedules. Inspired by Spotify and Netflix's generated suggestions, we aspire to curate an experience that will allow students to discover new organizations and club events tailored to their interests through AI.

What it does

A hybrid between UCI CampusGroups and Eventbrite, Zot Hub is a one-stop web interface to coordinate all club-related information for students and club officers. Clubs are able to create a profile and keep members up to date by posting upcoming events on the main page. Students are able to follow clubs, register for events, and receive new recommendations based on their activity history.

How we built it

We began with planning the visual layout on Figma to sketch out the UI and better understand the user flow. We produced low and high-fidelity wireframes of the website's pages and functions to establish a foundation for the front-end development. In addition, for the backend, we used Django in order to create a REST API with a SQL backend run on CockroachDB. We provided multiple endpoints for display clubs and events as well as providing several services such as a search feature and an AI recommendation endpoint. Finally, we used React, Bootstrap, CSS, HTML, and Javascript in order to create our frontend website.

Challenges we ran into

We ran into the challenge of integrating our backend and frontend - we ended up not having enough time to do so at the end. Another challenge we ran into was incorporating many different libraries together, because some interfered with or overrode others, especially with the styling.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud to have finished a working REST API and a database using CockroachDB. We're also proud of creating a great looking frontend and a functional and robust backend. The AI recommendation engine was also a highlight of our project.

What we learned

We learned that sometimes, it's best to create the functionality of the project first (integration of frontend/backend) before trying to be too ambitious with how the frontend is styled. We also learned that the frontend and the backend have to be perfectly in sync with the API that they are communicating with. If there are any inconsistencies, this will result in the application not linking together.