AppEase

Meet the AppEase Team!
AppEase Listing Form

Inspiration

As students at UCSB who all live in IV apartments, we have had first-hand experience in trying to find suitable parking and secure a space for personal belongings within Isla Vista. Seeing as there were not too many apps that attempted to focus on the latter problem, we decided to create AppEase to revolve around finding a solution to both issues. We also recognize that said problems are magnified in areas of high population density, as colleges such as UC Berkeley and CSU Fullerton have even harder times addressing these problems.

What it does

The functionality of our web app is two-fold. First, we foster a friendly environment in which students are able to request and receive storage for their items/belongings from one another. The aim of this is to provide an easy and affordable alternative for struggling university students as opposed to using private self-storage companies, which impose monthly charges upwards of $100 for relatively small spaces and lock students into long term payment plans. AppEase’s other feature provides the ability to post and book parking spaces from residents in the nearby area. This is especially useful in congested areas such as Isla Vista -- with more than 20,000 residents competing for about 3,500 parking spots, finding parking proves to be an uphill battle. Ultimately AppEase works to benefit both parties, allowing students to save money and make money while increasing interconnectedness among the community.

How we built it

Motivated by a common goal and shared vision, our team was able to cohesively work together to develop AppEase. Our backend team, which consisted of Iris and Jay, began with using node.js and MongoDB to set up a secure authentication process for users and creating multiple http methods. The parking feature was initially created and the storage feature modeled after. The frontend of AppEase, led by Achyuth, Adarsha, and Surya, used React to create basic aesthetics for the web app. At the end, our team came together to help add the finishing touches and successfully tie together with frontend and backend portions using Fetch.

Challenges we ran into

Pursuing a project like AppEase brought its own challenges, some of which we never would have dreamed of. We found ourselves struggling to keep our eyes open, despite SB Hacks’ best effort to provide us with a number of different foods and drinks (some of which we didn’t even know was caffeinated until much later). Coupled with the 36 hour time constraint, the experience of trying to coordinate among the five of us on how to approach certain aspects of our project was incredibly surreal. One of our biggest issues was trying to connect the front-end services and back-end services together, but thanks to the supportive community and advice of the mentors at SB Hacks, we were able to overcome these initial setbacks to get past these issues. Our team would frequently bounce between working in Corwin Pavilion and the second floor in the library, to the point where our entire team booked all our available study room hours for the entire week! And yet, through a lot of hard work and a little bit of needed luck, we pushed through to create the awesome web app that is AppEase.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Coming together and working as a team to build a working web application over the span of 36 hours is something we feel incredibly proud of! Even though things did get difficult, working together we were able to overcome our struggles. There are still quite a few features we hope to implement and improve moving forward, but the byproduct of the hackathon is something that all of us on our team will get our hands behind without hesitation. Also, for all of us, this was our first ever hackathon, which only adds to what we deem to be a success. Being able to be a part of such a large event and share a laugh along the way with friends, old and new, made this experience only that much more worthwhile.

What we learned

SB Hacks provided us with the opportunity to effectively expand our repertoire of programming knowledge, quickly cramming a number of programming languages in the span of a couple days (learning react.js and node.js in a few days is no easy feat!). Most importantly, through this adventure, we learned a lot about ourselves and found out how far we could go.

What's next for AppEase

We see a lot of potential for AppEase’s future going forward. Incorporating different payment options (Venmo, Paypal, Zelle, etc.) for users to easily conduct direct financial transactions within the platform would be our first order of business. Including an option for users to message and interact with one another in order to offer better flexibility, promote community, and increase the comfort level of app users is also a development priority. We would like to see additional security measures added to the app, such as ensuring users upload their drivers’ licenses to hold them more liable in situations where storage property may get damages or lost. Finally improving the styling, look, and feel of the app is a long term goal.