A campus based, social, mobile app
This project was part of a first ever Stony Brook Hackathon known as CatAHack (creative arts and technology hackathon) in which students would group together over the course of 12 hours and try to create a service/technology that would benefit the social community on campus. With the aid of a few designers and engineers from a local design company, we ultimately decided to base our app around meeting new people, but in a strictly platonic fashion. When tossing around ideas, one of us brought up how they frequently ended up eating alone at the dining hall because no one they knew was around during those hours. Surprisingly, a lot of us could attest to being in this situation and we decided to go with it.
Design
When discussing how we would bring people together efficiently and effectively, we very quickly determined that a phone application would be the solution as it would be the most accessible. We also came to the conclusion that in order for the app to be effective it would have to be very minimal (to promote ease of use) and anonymous (to promote purely platonic interactions).
In order to initiate an interaction, a user would either choose a seat and set a flag on the app (known as a setter) or search for other users who have already set flags (known as a seeker). GPS coordinates would be used to detect the dining hall in which a user is located and a digital map representing that area would be displayed. Below is a diagram of how a typical interaction would work.
Setter
Seeker
After the 12 hours had passed, all groups had to present their ideas in front of 3 judges. Some of the other groups had come up with interesting ideas, but ours received first for its simplicity and design. This win was definitely a confidence booster at the time, but wasn't truly appreciated until later projects when the development techniques and prototyping applications I had learned at that hackathon were put to use.