GroupSpace

GroupSpace is a game changer for team projects. See our website here

Inspiration

Every time when the start of semesters roll around, we all get anxious at the thought of group assignments. Schedule misalignment, workstyle preferences, differences in goals… Coordinating a group meeting time is already difficult enough, let alone completing the project in collaboration. Recognizing the challenges of finding compatible peers for group projects or study sessions, we aimed to create a platform where students could easily find others with similar academic goals, schedules, and interests.

What it does

GroupSpace is a web application that enables tutors to establish virtual spaces where students can connect based on shared criteria such as availability, target grades, hobbies, and more. Students can input their preferences and requirements, allowing a medium to advertise themselves and also find suitable group mates.

How we built it

Front end: React, TypeScript, tailwindcss, shadcn UI library
Backend: Node.js, Firebase
Illustrations: ClipStudioPaint, Adobe Illustrator
With lots of generous late night help from the mentors

Challenges we ran into

At the beginning of the hackathon, a mentor advised us that our original idea was not unique and how an existing competitor existed that did most of what we were planning on building. After a team meeting, we decided to pivot and create GroupSpace. Even with the hackathon well underway, we were confident in our abilities to finish it. We had 4hr sprints, with regular meetings starting in the morning and ending late at night to ensure we worked efficiently.

However, as first time hackathoners, we were ambitious and underestimated how long some things would take to complete our full vision. Sometimes our meetings would take up more than the 15min allocated or sometimes we would get side tracked on little details. Moreover, a lot of effort was used to custom code the front-end components and we took a decent amount of time getting used to Firebase.

Whilst coding up the front end, we also had some misalignments between the UI designs and the database design so we had to re-evaluate the flow and logic of the application to meet a compromise between what was in the backend and what was assumed in the frontend.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our Figma designs started us off strong, leading to our simple & clean UI design and smooth UX flow. The custom illustrations also brought a lot of life to our overall design and branding. Our backend is mostly complete and our web app UI is also finished. We are also currently serving live data, however certain planned functionalities such as the team matching compatibility metric and automatic matching engine was shelved due to time constraints.

Apart from some minor hiccups, our team was able to communicate clearly and delegate tasks efficiently. Overall, collaborating on this group project successfully was very rewarding.

What we learned

Everyone in the team had to get used to or delve deeper into libraries/technologies such as shadcn and Firebase. We had to become resourceful and get our app to work in the quickest way possible.

Through this hackathon, we also became better at building an application with a team. Balancing different opinions and coordinating our work together is not something we would do individually.

What's next for GroupSpace

Mobile application version (iOS/Android) + Mobile responsiveness
Allowing all types of users to create and define their own space features, so that it can be applied to a wide variety of use cases.
Implementing a matching engine/matching metric where users can better discover individuals most suitable for their projects.
Ease of Life improvements (e.g. editing profile, editing space features).

Our business plan

We will offer a SaaS-type pricing model with the free model being able to create and join teams. The free model will be able to access our future timetable compatibility calculations aswell as AI assisted match making
On the paid model, students and teachers will be able to customise their fields to allow wider flexibility.
Our decision to use Firebase allows us to have shorter development times as well as reduce initial set-up costs. When scaling, we would look for alternatives to Firebase however from a business standpoint it is more beneficial to go with a upgrade-as-you-go approach.