SmooFriends

No hall culture? No problem. SmooFriends connects you with peers nearby who are free to eat, study, or chat—spontaneously and stress-free.

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Topic

Community theme

Inspiration

At Singapore Management University (SMU), we noticed a persistent problem: students often eat, study, and move through campus in isolation. Without a strong hall culture, casual peer-to-peer connections are rare. We saw classmates eating alone, struggling to find last-minute project teammates, or wandering to find uncrowded study areas. These gaps in connection inspired us to build a solution that makes meeting new people as easy as tapping a button. The goal is to turn moments like free time between classes to connect with others.

What it does

SmooFriends is a web app that connects SMU students spontaneously for lunch, study, and conversation. It helps users:

  1. Match with lunch or study buddies based on factors including current availability
  2. View real-time crowd data at popular campus spots (like Koufu, Li Ka Shing, or SOE Fish Tank).
  3. Chat instantly with matched peers to meet-up

How we built it

We built SmooFriends using React for the front-end and Node.js for the backend. Authentication is handled through school email verification, while Supabase manages our database. Messaging is built using native React. For matching, the logic compares a user’s current request against a queue of pending requests. When there is a match in availability and preferences, both users are instantly paired.

Challenges we ran into

Building SmooFriends came with its fair share of hurdles. We have frequent debugging in React. Managing GitHub is also tricky as we faced while pushing and committing as it crashed our repository. As a result, we have to create a new repository. Time constraints is major challenge as developing a full web app within a limited timeframe (less than 2 days) meant making decisions to prioritize features and code work past midnight. Lastly, using Chatandbuild to generate the front end required trial and error in writing the right prompts to get usable code which took patience and iteration.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

  1. Successfully built a working prototype that matches real users
  2. Creating a clean UI that makes the user experience enjoyable and easy
  3. Created a platform that helps with student life

What we learned

Throughout this project, we learned just how crucial good UI design is—it's not just about aesthetics, but about making the user journey intuitive and enjoyable. We also gained valuable hands-on experience with React to structure and manage components. Using Chatandbuild as a tool to help with front end development taught us how to refine prompts to produce usable output.

What's next for SmooFriends

We’re planning to:

  1. Add more granular matching options, including preferences for gender, faculty, or even conversation topics
  2. Explore a mobile-first version for better accessibility and push notifications
  3. Partner with SMU student clubs and initiatives to pilot the platform for events or networking lunches

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