ConnectUni

The Problem

Entering University is often a stressful life transition for many, especially for freshmen, transferring, or exchange students. Students that find it hard to connect with their peers in-person may struggle to build lasting connections.

Our Solution

ConnectUni serves to encourage students to connect with others by separating personal socialization and school persona. In our app, students are able to add groups, friends, and events. These can be searched or filtered by “interests.” When viewing other people’s profiles, you are able to view their groups and interests and request to be their friend. Users are able to message friends or in chats associated with groups. Groups and events are able to be edited. The app is also able to be viewed in dark mode. ConnectUni’s GitHub page can be viewed here, while the website details its motivation, goals, usage, and development.

My Contributions

ConnectUni was created as my final project in ICS466 (Mobile App Development) in collaboration with Kenji Sanehira, Michelle Ho, and Raphael Bumanlag. We created ConnectUni using Firebase, Flutter, and Riverpod. I created several pages initially (create event, create profile, direct messaging list, chat page), standardized mock databases, and implemented the events provider. I implemented events, which included the edit events page, event forms, and updating event info. I also utilized FlexColorScheme to create a theme and dark mode for our app.

My Experience

With previous experience in web applications, participating in the development of ConnectUni helped me to widen my experience towards mobile applications. I learned how to use Flutter and Firebase and am looking forward to translating my work here onto other projects.