BrewMates

Connect with your BrewMates over a cup of coffee! ☕

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Inspiration💡

Have you ever attended a networking event or coffee chat and subconsciously wondered “what in the world should I even ask?” With more and more recruiting events, it is crucial that we feel empowered to proactively make that first impression. However, many students have expressed their concern about attending networking sessions and the struggle to stand out amongst a competitive pool of applicants. Our team recognizes how daunting it can be to start a conversation which is why we built BrewMates, a mobile app that catalyzes your career by equipping you with tools so you can confidently approach your next coffee chat opportunity!

What it does 💻

Once users create a profile they are given access to BrewMates' three main features:

  1. Generate personalized prompts to start conversations based on Cohere's prompt generator
  2. Gamify challenges to encourage students to achieve their goals
  3. Garner connections quickly and conveniently through our QR scanner

How we built it 🛠️

Our initial prototypes were designed in Figma and then further developed into a responsive web application through React. For the backend, we used React and Cohere’s NLP Generate API to generate coffee chat prompts that facilitate rich conversations between students and recruiters. Moreover, we integrated React QR Reader API into our app to streamline making connections during the networking process. React, HTML and CSS are used to display the web application and Firebase deployed our application which stores user information.

Challenges we ran into ⛰️

Github pushing/pulling requests: Since most of us have not worked with Github before, we learned through trial and error how to merge and accept conflicts, form branches, and make commits

Connecting Cohere API to React: Without much knowledge on APIs and Javascript, we had to debug several node and package errors which were preventing our application from running

Using React and Javascript for the first time: It took time to familiarize ourselves with the syntax and understand the various properties of these languages (eg. components, classes, objects, return statements, etc.)

Understanding how to help our teammates: Since we all specialized in one aspect of the project (eg. APIs, frontend, or backend) it was difficult to determine how we could assist our teammates when some of us had completed a task

Accomplishments that we're proud of 🏅

Despite SheHacks+ 7 being most of our first hackathons, we ambitiously aimed to develop a functional product using foreign tools, technologies and frameworks. By creating an accessible platform that we can all benefit from, we are proud to have accomplished our goal while effectively delegating tasks, working collaboratively, having fun and making the most out of our hackathon experience

What we learned 📚

  • How to use React, Git/Github, implement APIs, and deploy our web application to Firebase
  • Understand concepts prior to attempting a task (we learned the hard way that it is not just about coding but rather the design-thinking process and how we aim to build our solution)

What's next for BrewMates 🥅

Using point system to encourage students to enhance their networking skills and habits: Through the pre-existing game features, we want to incentive students to establish and strive towards their outreach goals

Recording and organizing networking history: Building upon our efficient user connection function, we want students to be able to reflect, track and update their networking progress and experiences

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