Dub Friends

Inception:

Have you ever thought, ‘Is there someone on campus who could become my lifelong friend, and I’ll never meet them?’

The biggest advantage of the UW’s massive campus is that there’s so much opportunity for networking and friendships, but how many of the UW’s 40,000+ students will you meet in just four years? Though you will meet great friends through your RSOs, classes, dorm community, and other activities, there will always be potential BFFs you will never meet.

Features:

Introducing DubFriends: Social Media Made Wholesome. DubFriends provides an interactive map that shows users a radius around themselves and a list of profiles within that radius. The profile thumbnails have a profile picture that expresses the user’s personality. Additionally, depending on the show option, the thumbnails either show the user’s three favorite interests, three words that describe the user, or a fun fact or one sentence describing the user.

When you tap on a profile, you can see a longer intro and more info such as major, school year, more interests and descriptive words, and RSOs. You can also request to chat with a user you like in your radius. After getting to know each other through chat and sharing their location (a dot will pop up on their radius), the two users can set an on-campus meeting location close to both, and the app will guide them to each other. Once the users decide to meet, the app suggests meetup options like ‘send a landmark pic, ‘describe your clothes,’ ‘do a pose,’ or ‘show token.’ For example, at the meetup location, users can tap on the ‘hold up token’ button, which shows a full-screen version of your token: either your profile picture or a custom design.

The app also enables users to search for friends of friends or people with similar interests, majors, or other criteria. Additionally, since we all live on the same campus, we can host events on the app, such as ‘Dinner together,’ ‘Lunch Meetup,’ or ‘Weekend Friend-making Soiree.’

In the future, we plan to implement a group profile feature that’s available when two users meet successfully. Other users can then search for groups and request to join. It’s always less awkward to hang out in a group!

Development:

We began work on DubFriends as soon as we formed a team during team formation today. With two designers using Figma and two front-end developers using Next js and React js, we were the perfect team. We had so much fun discussing our plans, designing, coding, and just working furiously all day. In a way, Dubfriends is already a success because it made the developers become friends. We were able to successfully work with a popular tech stack and framework to create both a friendly and intuitive UI. Additionally, we implemented the Google Maps API to simulate two users meeting.

Mission:

Student success in a big university like the UW depends so much on connecting with each other, networking, forming new and creative communities, and making friends. Many UW students struggle during their first quarter due to isolation and loneliness because it’s hard to make friends. DubFriends can help with this challenge, enabling people to meet other people from more diverse backgrounds and socialize smarter and easier.

Built With

• css
• figma
• google-cloud
• google-maps
• html
• javascript
• locofy.ai
• nextjs
• react