gathr

Bored but have nothing to do on a Saturday night? Use gathr to create and find events near you!

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How it all started:

Inspiration: We often find ourselves bored and wanting to go out on weekend evenings, but don’t know where to go or what to do. We tried using Facebook events, but find it too difficult to use, and it was hard to narrow down on events to go to. So, we decided to create an app that lets us find relevant nearby events on a map.

What it does: The app is a platform that enables users to view events that are going on around them and also post public/private events. The target audience is college students looking for events hosted by other students, student organizations and some businesses. Right now, the app has a working map and lets a registered user create events by selecting a location on a map. The map is updated real time, and the events are visible on the map across different devices.

How we built it: We first sketched out the pages based on features that we wanted and needed on paper, and then created a prototype on Adobe XD. Using that as a base, we implemented the user interface using Swift and Xcode. We used Google’s Map API and Location Services to create the map and record locations, and Firebase real-time database to store information about the user, and the events that were created. We also used GeoFire for quick geolocation queries to load nearby events from the data base.

Challenges we ran into: We started running into blocks as early as the design phase. We had a difficult time deciding which features would be relevant to the user, and how we would fit them into a user interface that was both intuitive and functional. We went through several designs before we could decide on one. Aside from regular bugs and coder’s blocks, a significant challenge we encountered was regarding information on the database. We needed to figure out a structure for our data that would make the program look up information efficiently while using the app.

Accomplishments that we’re proud of: Starting from the ground up, we are happy with our concept designs. It looks like an app that we would want to and be able to use ourselves - making it that way was more difficult than it sounded! Most importantly, we are happy to have a basic version of the app functioning the way we want it to - users have the ability to post events that appear on the map across all devices as we had imagined it to.

What we learned: Developing a user interface is difficult. Specifically creating an interface that is clean and visually pleasing. We learned of the many details that needed to be taken into consideration like the sizes of buttons, text placement, color scheme, etc. Creating something that was both user friendly and aesthetic was difficult because we wanted the interface to be self-explanatory, but sometimes having that would take away from the visuals and vice-versa.

What’s next for Gathr: The very next step would be to give the user the ability to see the details of the events that appear on the map already. Once that is done, we would revamp the page for creating the event to the concept design that we already have. Next, we would have to use geodata to tie geographical information into the created events (places where the event is located etc) so that the app is more user friendly. This would be the start, and we will go on to implement even more features that were not implementable in this Hackathon.

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