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Profile info and stats
Inspiration
It’s hard to stay in touch with all the different groups in our lives — friends, family, coworkers — especially when chats go quiet and social media feels like a performance.
We built Dumpster to make staying connected fun and low-effort. A simple daily photo prompt turns into a quick game with your group — just enough chaos to keep the vibe alive.
What it does
Users join groups where each day they receive a fun photo prompt.
They submit a photo based on the prompt, and the next day they play a game with their group—either voting on the best or funniest photos or commenting anonymously on a random submission.
Every day at 8 PM, the results are revealed, sparking laughs and inside jokes to keep groups connected with low-effort, playful interaction.
How we built it
Typescript, Expo, React Native, Gemini API
Challenges we ran into
Structuring the database was tricky — we had to keep it simple while storing key info like user profiles, photos, timestamps, and organizing everything by group.
We also hit merge conflicts while building the games, profiles, and group pages at the same time, which made integration harder than expected.
Finally, debugging across multiple large files slowed us down — small errors were hard to spot and often buried deep in unrelated code.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We designed a game mechanic that turns passive photo sharing into active group interaction — without needing comments, likes, or follower counts.
It helps people stay connected across all their circles. Whether it's friends, family, or coworkers, the app creates fun, low-effort moments that keep relationships active.
We created something people actually want to open. No likes, no filters — just a reason to come back and feel part of something every day.
What we learned
Working in parallel taught us how important it is to divide tasks early, communicate often, and document everything — especially when multiple people are touching the same files.
We learned how important it is to plan data structures early — organizing users, groups, and photos in a clean, scalable way saved us from major refactors later and made the app easier to build, debug, and expand.
What's next for Dumpster
Weekly highlight reels like “Trashposter of the Week” or “Most Unidentifiable Object” User-submitted prompts for chaos powered by the community Real-time notifications when your friends dump, so the trash talk can start instantly
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