Rekindle

Framing the Problem

The problem we are trying to solve is reconnecting with different people across stages of life. This is specifically geared towards people who are trying to find other colleagues or old friends. Therefore, primary stakeholders would be users such as students or professionals of different work environments. Secondary stakeholders could include different event organizers and community owners who are looking to connect multiple people together in person and who could use the solution to advertise.

Idea Explanation

Our idea is to create a social media to help solve the problem of not being able to reconnect with colleagues or friends. It solves the problem by having several different pages with features that help with networking. Firstly each profile has the organization and previous institutes they have worked at (and dates) to make them easier to find.

Another example is the event page, in which the user can join different events created by organizations. Each event has a list of other users who the user knows (is in their following) that are attending the event. This makes it much easier for people to connect at events as they can easily see which of their friends/ colleagues are going to the event making them more motivated to go. This also makes it less tedious to find friends at events because instead of emailing each other and asking by message if their friend has received a ticket, the system will automatically update to include their profile and say that they are attending the event.

Similar logic has been applied to the community page in which users join communities tailored to their interests. This feature also allows the user to see if their following / followers are in these communities and helps with networking as users can find common interests to start conversations about. Furthermore, they can also find other users who they do not know within these community group chats who share the same interests which they would not meet otherwise.

Another feature included in the solution is a calendar function. This calendar allows you to input events that you are attending and is visible to your friends (following). This is necessary because it helps users plan meetings together more cohesively as they are able to see what times they are each free. This has been further streamlined. Based on this calendar, in the chat page it will display "You're both next free at ___" This is great because it allows the user to straight away see if they can schedule a quick meeting with another user on the same day without having to backtrack to the calendar.

Implementation

When the user first logs in (simple user name and password page) they will straight away go to the home page. This login will be based on a database which will store the user logins and passwords to allow users to access their respective profiles. The home page contains posts and is a feed that will be tailored to users based on keywords found in communities they use and other posts they have liked.

Then they can click on their profile in the right top corner to access their own posts. This will also contain their friends, communities and past information beneath their profile photo. After this they can click on a navbar to access five different pages.

Event: In this page users have options to view events that are occurring. Events listings will be pulled from other websites and users have options to list their own events that people can attend. When users click on an event they will be taken to a page for the event providing more details about the event and more importantly allows users to see which of their friends or mutuals are attending the event, and people they may know from previous schools or work who they are not connected and will be able to reconnect by using the event as a topic and potentially attending the event.

Calendar: In this page users can view their calendars and add events. Users have options to share their calendar with close friends only or for everyone they are connected with. The calendar will be connected with close friends calendars and automatic messages will be sent to the users in chat informing of times they are both free based on their calendar to prompt them to message each other and reconnect whether in person or by phone.

Chat:

In this page the user can chat to other users in their following, the user who has sent messages last will pop up at the top of the chat logs (so newer messages at the top and older messages at the bottom). Once again the time at which they are both available first will show up on the chat log. They can click on other users profiles and then text them to send a message.

Societies:

When this page is clicked on the navbar the user can see different societies recommended to them based on organizations they are in or have previously been in. This will contain the name of the society, which organization is running the society (for verification checks) and a list of followers which are attending. This is visual as their profiles are shown underneath the information with a number showing how many followers are attending.

Communities:

When this is pressed a list of communities will show up. This is similar to societies but more geared towards people a part of organizations such as schools and businesses (students and professionals). Once again a list of mutuals can be seen who have already joined the community.

To traverse back to the post feed the home icon can be pressed in the other corner. For this to be coded and deployed HTML CSS and JavaScript could be used to implement the website itself and MySQL could be used to create and store different users for login based access.

Challenges

With lack of coding experience we knew it would be hard to implement a prototype with languages such as HTML, CSS and JavaScript with a full working database. To overcome it we decided to create a prototype in Figma, a visual based solution which still shows the functions we want to implement in our solution.

Another issue we had was timing, it was not feasible for each member to work concurrently on separate tasks as different tasks had a large range of effort and time (for example designing the solution on Figma required lots of time while creating a presentation required small amounts of time). To solve this we decided to work collaboratively together on the largest tasks and team members who had finished their parts on larger tasks dealt with smaller tasks. This also allowed us to go through the process easier as we could use our combined knowledge of different apps to aid us.

Accomplishments

During this Hackathon project, we have all learnt what it means to work as a team and how to play to everyone's strengths in order to have the best team dynamic as possible. We worked as a team to finish a working prototype within the given amount of time, improving out time management skills and giving us an insight into how project timelines might work in the real world.

Furthermore, we all either greatly improved out Figma skills, or learning it as a new skill altogether. The members who were more confident in their design skills were able to help the ones who were not so sure, also improving our leadership and mentoring skills - a great accomplishment.

Similarly, we have also all learnt how to use video editing skills using knowledge of more experienced team members to help overall with making, editing and submitting YouTube videos. This is evident in our flow video which displays how our solution works

Next Steps

There are several features that can be implemented to improve this solution. For example, considering the problem is to connect with friends and colleagues from the past the solution can accommodate this more. This can be done in the "My friends" list in the profile page which could contain a list of past people who the user has been followed by / followed. This would be advantageous as sometimes human error can lead to people being unfollowed or removed by accident. If the other users were to change their username/ handle they would be much harder to find, meaning a past friends list would keep them reserved for the user to access again.

Buddy-Up feature will be implemented in the future. This feature will enable users to use AI-generated match-making to allow users to find friends in their area increasing more face-to-face contact. Users will be able to personalize their profile and add things like distance from town, their favorite spots, favorite music, gender, favorite activities, clubs and much more to increase the efficiency of the AI-tool in finding the best and more compatible buddies.

Considering the scope of the solution multiple people will use the app. This requires a large database which needs to be implemented in the future and lots of storage to maintain posts, profiles and chats. To pay for this storage different strategies can be utilized. For example, for a community/event to be listed a price should be paid by the organizer. Another monetization strategy could take place is in the post feed. Within the post feed companies and universities can pay to advert job listings and their own communities.