At QHacks 2020, our school’s 36-hour hackathon, my team and I had created a mobile app, EventBuddy, that centers around the idea of being able to find a friend to accompany you with to events, such as poetry night, stand-up comedy, etc. Being the only designer in a team of 3 other developers, I created a set of prototypes in Sketch to demonstrate the functionality, user pathing, and the overall interface of our app.
36 hours @
QHacks 2020
Cathy Yan
Jessie Lu
Alex Webster
Hatim Belhadjhamida
UX/UI Designer
DESIGN:
Sketch
BACK-END:
Python, Flask, AWS, Firebase, PredictHQ
FRONT-END:
Java, Android Studio, Twillio
My team members and I spent an hour with the ideation and discussions. This was the most important part of our hackathon process.
After defining the scope, I roughly sketched out some low-fidelity screens to reflect the main features for my team to further iterate, provide feedback, and provide their opinions.
Before prototyping, we wanted to give our app a personality. While jotting down words and brainstorming, I made little icons using simplistic shapes that reflected exactly what we wanted the app to be: the reliable pal to connect you with new friends!
The team eventually loved and wanted as our app icon/mascot. We named him Bud!
A few fun questions to get everything set up! This allows our app recommend buddies to you through derived-interests.
A vast selection with various events to engage with. These are currently based on location and events nearby.
Something we would’ve liked to implement if there was more time is the ability for event discovery to be personalized as well, and the ability to filter results.
Through our algorithms, we’ll be able to find the most compatible buddies based off the sign-up survey. Users can view other profiles under the event detail page to see who is going and who they would like to reach out to.
Our messaging system allows efficient event planning for the user and their new buddy.
A feature that we would like to implement is for users to be able to “pin” conversations as a seperate section from Recent. This would allow flexibility for users to easily access certain chats for planning.
My three tired developer buddies; Waiting for judges to come by! So nerve-wracking.
We won! All grins and smiles after staying up all night
While my teammates finished up coding and fixing bugs, I made a simple presentation slide and we decided to let the judges try our app, hands-on, through signing-up.
Our app’s visual identity and personality stood out to judges, and they were impressed with our teamwork for us to complete this project. We were awarded “Best use of Google Cloud” for the use of Firebase to store user data on the cloud.
Check out our coded project:
© Cathy Yan 2024 | Designer | cathyyan604@gmail.com
