commonroom's project story
✨ inspiration
Upon entering high school, university, or (if you're old) work, we're all faced with, arguably, the most formidable struggle known to humankind: forming connections.
Here's what I've learned from the process.
- You talk about common, boring stuff.
- "What class do you have next?"
- "Hey, how's your day going?"
- You complain about your shared circumstances
- "Oh my god, I totally bombed that kinematics test."
- "I'm so tired today, why do I need to wake up so early for work?"
- However, you inevitably run out of conversation topics.
- No kidding, small talk is DRY.
We all have interests we don't share with others because we're not sure if they care, or if they also enjoy it. Inspired by the desire most have to be social, commonroom bypasses discomfort to proffer all the commonalities you and your acquaintances have.
We were spurred by the notion that you could expedite connection and convinced that we could facilitate the formation of life-long friendships, we created commonroom.
🙌🏻 what it does
commonroom only shows you the mutual interests you have with other people. You could be a closeted artist or watched a bunch of uncommon shows, or maybe are interested in an esoteric subject to use our app! As long as you hope to share these interests with people who have the same interest, this app is for you.
🧓🏻 how to use it
It's easy! You add your own interests (eg. TV shows you like, hobbies you do, really anything!) which you can alter at any time. From there, commonroom matches you with select users and fills your feed with their blog posts. You won't know who they are, and vice versa- you only get to see their posts. If you find yourself interested in the content a user is putting out, you're free to start a chat and let your interests take it from there. Whether or not you take action based on that information is your choice!
🤑 business viability
Currently, we see a huge demand for our app. Everywhere, people want to connect. Unfortunately, It's hard to do that when you're blind to the person you're connecting with.
Current apps on the market, like Instagram or Facebook, rarely show our true interests. Rather, they tend to be platforms to "flex". However, on sites like WhatsApp or Snapchat, we never learn anything new about our peers. This is an extreme opportunity for us.
Our app will expedite and simplify the process of making friends, while further developing users' interest in the things they like. The driving incentive behind why you would use commonroom over every other social media app is because you're incentivized to share your true self. After all, the only people who will be able to see your interest in one area would be others who have the same interest. There is little room to be ostracized or judged.
Of course, we will be adding more mechanisms to ensure people do not impersonate others and see their interests, however even without these safety checks, our platform ultimately hosts less judgement than others. Our name, which is simple and literal, would also stay memorable in people's minds and allow for easy marketing. We anticipate creating revenue through ads. One unique way stream of revenue is embedded subtly in our "meetups" tab. When people choose to meet up, they will be able to choose places to go. Should, say, a restaurant sponsor us, we would boost their restaurant to the top. To users, commonroom offers a platform for people to comfortably connect with others, without the worries of being negatively judged by their differences. To sponsors, commonroom provides a way to gain more exposure and guests.
👩🏻💻 how we built it
We started with prototyping on Figma while trying to figure out the hoops and loops of Firebase's Realtime Database and Google Cloud Run.
🧩 challenges we ran into
We experienced a series of issues with Firebase and Google Cloud. It soon became a hassle since we expended much more of our time researching about them than expected, which took away time to build the actual web app.
In terms of UI/UX design, we were initially stumped by how to make a social media app, since our previous experiences all laid in making website or marketing posts. We wanted to make the website intuitive, visually pleasing and most importantly, dark mode (yes, because we don't enjoy strained eyes in this household). However, bereft of prior experience, we had to make up in the research of social media websites, analysis of information found, and synthesis of the features most preferred.
🎇 accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud of our teamwork that developed a neat idea for the solution to a real problem experienced by all. commonroom aims to build stronger connections between people through emphasizing common interests and offering a safe, non-judgemental environment. In the end, we accomplished having a good time as a group and exploring different tools.
🤠 what we learned
Hack the North was a big learning experience for all of us. We explored interesting functions of Github and VSCode. We have been pushed to develop better time management skills to make the most of what we can do together.
🚀 what's next for commonroom?
Honestly, we're not absolutely sure. Here's our best estimate though:
Should we have the resources and remain immune to the deadly disease of senioritis, we hope to expand its ability for detecting similar interests. We could use machine learning to make connections between hobbies. Eg. someone who puts their interest as "food" could also be connected with people who enjoy "cooking". We are also working to make the website more intuitive and visually pleasing, as we are currently on our first rendition. Should we continue this project, we hope to ascend to a point where we can reach a significant number of people to improve data collection and user experience.
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