Our team for sure wanted to create something that could help in some shape or form towards global issues. We bounced through several ideas, ranging from carpool tracking to tree planting. Chatify is a combination of all our ideas, in which users are able to discuss in small groups about a topic pertaining to a global issue. Through socially tough times like Covid-19, meeting new people will no longer be a challenge!
Choose from numerous different chat rooms, where unique topics have been assigned. The first to join a room is able to set a topic, which will be seen on the main page. Up to 10 people can join each room, and then, let the debate begin! There’s no right or wrong answer, it’s just an opportunity to share your thoughts and hear from everyone else.
This site is built with Bootstrap and React, while the chat rooms are made with Firebase. It is a simple react app designed with Bootstrap, and when users click on a room, they’ll be redirected to a new page where different hosts can message one another.
It took us a few hours to come up with a solid idea of what kind of project we wanted to make. We had a lot of different ideas, but we weren’t sure how practical they were to realize them. As well, since not everyone on the team is familiar with the same technology, it was difficult to modify certain aspects of the project that we weren’t a part of. There was a lot of new learning, especially with Firebase since only one member of the team was familiar with it.
It works!! Although not all aspects of the project are completed, the general structure and framework is functioning. Users are able to first log in via Google account, and then choose a chat room that has a topic of interest to them. They can chat away! It was not easy to complete a project with a team that’s remote from each other, and that made the communication between ourselves difficult.
Reflecting on past hackathons, this one was a lot less stressful because we had come up with the idea beforehand and already arranged what technology we wanted to incorporate. We divided the team into two halves, which worked on separate ends of the project to lessen the burden on each person. Ultimately, we learned that it’s important to rely on each other for help, since everyone’s able to bring something to the table.
Dynamism!! Our project is built to only support 12 chatrooms at once, but further improvements could bump this number to as many as the public desires. As well, Chatify is very straightforward right now and doesn’t offer much besides a messaging API. We can improve our project by adding more features, such as “shorts” (similar to Tiktok) or video services (similar to Omegle).